“I must fain do that for a while,” answered Cuthbert; “I dare not linger so close to my father’s home at this time.  Moreover, the winter is fast coming upon us, when the ground will be deep in snow, and no man not bred to it could make shift to live in the forest.  To London must I go first.  I trow the time will not be wasted; for I will earn money in honest fashion, that I may have the wherewithal to live when I go to seek this lost treasure.

“And now, my cousin, tell me all the tale.  I know not rightly how the treasure was lost, and I have never heard of the gipsy folks or their hatred to our house.  It behoves me to know all ere I embark on the quest.”

“Yea, verily; and I will tell thee all I know.  Thou knowest well that of old the Trevlyns were stanch sons to the Church of Rome, and that in the days of Bloody Mary, as men call her now (and well she merits the name), the Trevlyns helped might and main in hunting down wretched Protestants and sending them to prison and the stake?”

“I have heard my father speak of these things,” answered Cuthbert, with a light shudder, calling to mind his father’s fierce and terrible descriptions of the scenes he had witnessed and taken part in during those short but fearful years of Mary’s reign, “but I knew not it had aught to do with the loss of the treasure.”

“It had this much to do,” answered Kate, “that my grandfather and your father, who of course were brothers, were so vehemently hated by the Protestant families, many of whose members had been betrayed to death by their means—­your father in particular was relentless in his efforts to hunt down and spy out miserable victims—­that when the Queen was known to be dead, and her successor and Protestant sister had been proclaimed in London, the Trevlyns felt that they had cause to tremble for their own safety.  They had stirred up relentless enmity by their own relentless conduct, and the sudden turn in fortune’s wheel had given these enemies the upper hand.”

“Ah!” breathed Cuthbert, “I begin to see.”

“The Trevlyns had not served the Bloody Queen and her minions without reward,” continued Kate, with flashing eyes; “they had heaped together no small treasure whilst this traffic in treachery had been going on, and in many cases the valuables of the victims they had betrayed to death had passed into the keeping of the betrayer.

“Oh, it is a detestable thing to think of!” cried the girl, stamping her foot.  “No wonder the judgment of God fell upon that unhallowed treasure, and that it was taken from its possessors!  No wonder it was doomed to lie hidden away till those who had gotten it had passed to their last account, and could never enjoy the ill-gotten gain.  And they were punished too—­ay, they were well punished.  They were fined terrible sums; they had to give back sums equal to the spoil they had filched from others.  Thy father, as thou knowest, was ruined; and we still feel that pinch of poverty that will be slow to depart altogether from our house.  Yet it serves us right—­it serves us right!  It is meet that the children should suffer for the sins of their parents.  I have not complained, and I will not complain;” and Kate threw back her head, whilst her eyes flashed with the stress of her feeling.