The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn: A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot by - (red queen ebook txt) 📗

wit in others. He had picked out Cherry from amongst her sisters for those qualities of brightness and vivacity in which he felt himself so deficient, and it seemed as though he took to Cuthbert for very much the same reason.

Cuthbert was ready enough to accept the advances of this good-natured youth. He was a stranger in this great city, whilst Jacob knew it well. He was eager to hear and see and learn all he could; and though Jacob's ideas were few and his powers of observation limited, he was still able to answer a great many of the eager questions that came crowding to the lips of the stranger as they walked the streets together. And when Cuthbert accompanied Jacob to his home, Abraham Dyson could fill up all the blank in his son's story, and was secretly not a little pleased with Cuthbert's keen intelligence and ready interest.

The Dysons were merchants in a small way of business, but were thriving and thrifty folks. They and the Holts had been in close relations one with the other for more than one generation, and any relative of Martin Holt's would have been welcome at their house. Cuthbert was liked on his own account; and soon he became greatly fascinated by the river-side traffic, took the greatest interest in the vessels that came to the wharves to be unladed, and delighted in going aboard and making friends with the sailors. He quickly came to learn the name of every part of the ship, and to pick up a few ideas on the subject of navigation. Whenever a vessel came in from the New World but recently discovered, he would try to get on board and question the sailors about the wonders they had seen. Afterwards he would discourse to Jacob or to Cherry of the things he had learned, and would win more and more admiration from both by his brilliant powers of imagination and description.

So the river became, as it were, a second home to him. Abraham Dyson had more than one wherry of his own in which Cuthbert was welcome to skim about upon the broad bosom of the great river. He soon became so skillful with the rude oars or the sail, that he was a match for the hardiest waterman on the river, and more than once Cherry had been permitted to accompany Cuthbert and Jacob upon some excursion up or down stream.

And now, after many weeks of pleasant comradeship, Cuthbert found himself in the unenviable position of standing rival to his friend in the affections of Cherry, and the more he thought about it the less he liked the situation. He could not give Cherry up--that was out of the question; besides, had he renounced her twenty times over, that would not improve Jacob's case one whit. Cherry was her father's own daughter, and, with all her kittenish softness, had a very decided will of her own. She was not the sort of daughter to be bought and sold, or calmly made over like a bale of wool. She would certainly insist on having a voice in the matter, and her choice was not likely at any time to fall upon the worthy but unprepossessing Jacob.

All this Cuthbert understood with the quick apprehension of a lover; but it was very doubtful if Jacob would so see things, and Cuthbert felt as though there was something of treachery in accepting and returning his many advances of friendship whilst all the time he was secretly affianced to the girl for whose hand Jacob had made formal application, and had been formally accepted, though for the present, on account of the maiden's tender years, the matter was allowed to stand over.

With Walter Cole there was no such hindrance to friendship, and just at this juncture Cuthbert prosecuted and confirmed his intimacy at that house by constant visits there. He was greedy of information and book learning, and in this narrow dim dwelling, literally stacked with books, papers, and pamphlets of all kinds, and partially given over to the mysteries of the printing press, seldom worked save at dead of night, Cuthbert's expanding mind could revel to its full content.

He devoured every book upon which he could lay hands--history, theology, philosophy; nothing came amiss to him. He would sit by the hour watching Anthony Cole at work setting type, asking him innumerable questions about what he had been last reading, and finding the white-headed bookseller a perfect mine of information.

Controversy and the vexed topics of the day were generally avoided by common consent. The Coles had learned through bitter experience the necessity for silence and reticence. Everybody knew them for ardent and devoted sons of Rome, and they were under suspicion of issuing many of the pamphlets against the policy of the King that raised ire in the hearts of the great ones of the land. But none of these "seditious" writings had so far been traced to them, and they still lived in comparative peace, although the tranquillity somewhat resembled that of the peaceful dwellers upon the sides of a volcanic mountain, within whose crater grumblings and mutterings are heard from time to time.

Cuthbert's frequent visits, and the manifest pleasure he took in their society, were a source of pleasure to both father and son; and though they never showed this pleasure too openly, or asked him to continue his visits or help them in their night work, they did not refuse his help when offered, and sometimes would look at each other and say:

"He is drawing nearer; he is drawing nearer. Old traditions, race instincts, are telling upon him. He is too true a Trevlyn not to become a member of the true fold. His vagrant fancy is straying here and there. He is tasting the bitter-sweet fruit of knowledge and restless search after the wisdom of this world. But already he begins to turn with loathing from the cold, lifeless Puritan code. Anon he will find that the Established Church has naught to give him save the husk, from which the precious grain has been carefully extracted."

"Father Urban thinks well of him," Walter once remarked, as they discussed the youth after his departure one evening. "He has met him, I know not where, and believes that there may be work for him to do yet. We want those with us who have the single mind and honest heart, the devotion that counts not the cost. All that is written on the lad's face. If he breaks not away from us, he may become a tool in a practised hand to do a mighty work."

Cuthbert, however, went on his way all unconscious of the notice he was arousing in certain quarters. His mind was filled just now with other matters than those of religious controversy. He had become rather weary of the strife of tongues, and was glad to busy himself with the practical concerns of life that did not always land him in a dilemma or a difficulty.

Abraham Dyson was having a new sloop built for trading purposes, and both Jacob and Cuthbert took the keenest interest in the progress of the work. The sloop was to be called the Cherry Blossom when complete, and it was Abraham Dyson's plan that the christening of the vessel by Cherry herself should be the occasion of her formal betrothal to his son.

This ceremony, however, would not take place for some while yet, as at present the little vessel was only in the earlier stages of construction. Neither Jacob nor Cuthbert had heard anything about this secondary plan, but both took the greater interest in the sloop from the fact that she was to be named after Cherry.

Cuthbert visited her daily, and Jacob as often as his duties at his father's warehouse allowed him. On this particular bright February afternoon the pair had been a great part of their time on the river, skimming about in the wherry, and examining every part of the little vessel under the auspices of the master builder. Dusk had fallen upon the river before they landed, and a heavy fog beginning to rise from the water made them glad to leave it behind. They secured the wherry to the landing stage, leaving the oars in her, as they not unfrequently did when returning late, and were pursuing their way up the dark and unsavoury streets, when the sound of a distant tumult smote upon their ears, and they arrested their steps that they might listen the better.

Cuthbert's quick ears were the first to gather any sort of meaning from the discordant shouts and cries which arose.

"They are chasing some wretched fugitive!" he said in a low voice. "That is the sound of pursuit. Hark! they are coming this way. Who and what are they thus hounding on?"

Nearer and nearer came the surging sound of many voices and the hurried trampling of feet.

"Stop him--catch him--hold him!" shouted a score of hoarse voices, rolling along through the fog-laden air long before anything could be seen. "Stop him, good folks, stop him! stop the runaway priest--stop the treacherous Jesuit! He is an enemy to peace--a stirrer up of sedition and conspiracy! Down with him--to prison with him! it is not fit for such a fellow to live. Down with him--stop him!"

"A priest!" exclaimed Cuthbert between his shut teeth, a sudden gleam corning into his eyes. "Jacob, heard you that? A priest--a man of God! one man against a hundred! Canst thou stand by and see such a one hunted to death? that cannot I."

Jacob cared little for priests--indeed, he had no very good opinion of the race, and none of Cuthbert's traditional reverence; but he had all an Englishman's love of fair play, and hated the cruelty and cowardice of an angry mob as he hated anything mean and vile, and he doubled back his wrist bands and clinched his horny fists as he answered:

"I am with thee, good Cuthbert. We will stand for the weaker side. Priest or no, he shall not be hounded to death in the streets without one blow struck in his defence. But how to find him in this fog?"

"We need not fight; that were mere madness," answered Cuthbert in rapid tones. "Ours is to hurry the fugitive into the wherry, loose from shore, and out into the river; and then they may seek as they will, they can never find us. Mist! hark! the cries come nigher. If the quarry is indeed before them, it must be very nigh. Mark! I hear a gliding footfall beside the wall. Keep close to me; I go to the rescue."

Cuthbert sprang swiftly through the darkness, and in a moment he felt the gown of a priest in his hand, and heard the sound of the distressed breathing of one hunted well nigh to the verge of exhaustion. As the hunted man felt the clasp upon his robe he uttered a little short, sharp cry, and made as if he would have stopped short; but Cuthbert had him fast by the arm, and hurried him along the narrow alley towards the river, upholding him over the rough ground, and saying in short phrases: "Fear nothing from us, holy Father; we are friends. We have come to save you. Trust only to us and, believe me, in three more minutes we shall be beyond the reach of these savage pursuers. The river is before us, though we see it not, and our boat awaits us there. Once aboard, they may weary themselves in their vain efforts to catch us; they will never find us in this fog.

"Here is the water side. Have a care how you step--Jacob, hold fast the craft whilst the Father steps in. So. All is well; cast off and I will follow."

There was the sound of a light spring; the boat gave a slight lurch, and then, gliding off into the mysterious darkness of the great river, was lost to sight of shore in the wreaths of foggy vapour.

"Where is the hound? where is the caitiff miscreant? Has he thrown himself into the river? Drowning is too good for such a dog as he!" shouted angry voices on the river's bank, and through the still air the sound of trampling footsteps could be heard up and down the little wharf which formed the landing stage.

"I hear the sound of oars!" shouted one.

"He has escaped us--curse the cunning of that Papist brood!" yelled another.

"Let us get a boat and follow," counselled a third; but this was more easily said than done, as there was no other boat tied up at that landing stage, and the fog rendered navigation too difficult and dangerous to be lightly attempted. With sullen growls and many curses the mob seemed to break up and disperse; but the leaders appeared to stand in discussion for some moments after the rest had gone, and several sentences were distinctly heard by those in the boat, who thought it safer to drift with the