“But the treasure?” questioned Cuthbert, eager to know more; “I have not yet heard how it was lost.”

Thus recalled to her subject, Kate took up her narrative again.

“You doubtless know that Queen Mary died in November of the year of grace fifteen hundred and fifty-eight.  In that year, some months earlier, my father was born, and at the time of the proclamation of the new Queen he was a tender infant.  My grandfather was in London about the Court, and his wife and child were here in this house—­the sumptuous mansion he and his father had built—­not dreaming of harm or ill.  They had not heard of the death of one Queen or the proclamation of the other till one dark winter’s night when, just as the household were about to retire to bed, my grandfather and your father, Cuthbert, arrived at the house, their faces pale with anxiety and apprehension, their clothes stained with travel; the state of both riders and horses showing the speed with which they had travelled, and betraying plainly that something urgent had happened.  The news was quickly told.  Queen Mary was dead.  Bonfires in London streets were blazing in honour of Elizabeth.  The Protestants were everywhere in a transport of joy and triumph.  The Papists were trembling for their lives and for their fortunes.  No one knew the policy of the new Queen.  All felt that it was like enough she would inflict bloody chastisement on those who had been the enemies of herself and of her Protestant subjects.  Even as the Trevlyn brothers had passed through the streets of the city on their way out, they had been hissed and hooted and even pelted by the crowd, some amongst which knew well the part they had played in the recent persecutions.  They had been not a little alarmed by threats and menaces hurled at them even in the precincts of St. James’s, and it had become very plain to them that they would speedily become the objects of private if not of public vengeance.  That being so, my grandfather was eager and anxious to return to the Chase, to place his wife and child in some place of safety; whilst your father’s fear was all for the treasure in gold and plate and valuables stored up in the house, which might well fall an easy prey to the rapacious hands of spoilers, should such (as was but too likely) swoop down upon the house to strive to recover the jewels and gold taken from them when they were helpless to oppose or resent such spoliation.”

“Then it was all laid by at the Chase—­all the money and precious things taken from others?”

“Yes, and a vast quantity of silver and gold plate which had come into the possession of former Trevlyns ever since the rise of the family in the early days of the Tudors.  The seventh Henry and the eighth alike enriched our forefathers, and I know not what wealth was stored up in the treasure room of this house now so drearily void.  But I mind well the story our grandam told us when we were little children, standing at her knee in the ruddy firelight,