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

brother and sister thus strangely located in the pixies' dell. Each day saw the girl growing stronger, brighter, and happier, till she could scarcely believe it was so short a time since she had fled from her father's house; whilst Cuthbert, intent upon his plans and his engineering operations, grew brown and muscular and self reliant, watching carefully and tenderly over his sister, but spending his time in healthful toil, and in working out self-imposed problems, confident that these would in the end succeed in enabling him to carry out the purpose of his heart.

The pixies' well proved very deep. Soundings taken by the rope showed that only too clearly. The water flowed three feet over the false bottom Robin had contrived the better to conceal his hiding place, whilst below that there was fully ten feet of water; and Petronella's face grew long as she saw the result of the sounding, for she could not imagine how any treasure could be got at that lay thirteen feet below the surface of the water.

"Never mind that, sister mine," said Cuthbert. "Belike it is to that very fact that it owes its long safety. Even Robin must have known that to bring it forth again must be a matter of time and patience. He could not visit it in a moment of haste or fright, and filch a piece away as he would. Doubtless the place was chosen by the old Long Robin of past days for the very difficulty there must be in bringing forth the prize. I have often thought that no buried treasure could so long have escaped prying hands and covetous spirits. Bit by bit some would have gone. It is the water that has been the best protection."

Petronella saw the force of that argument; but as she leaned over the wall, trying to peer into the dark depths whilst Cuthbert talked of his scheme for draining it dry, she heaved a little sigh, and said:

"And what if, after all that long labour, there be no treasure there in spite of all we believe?"

He looked a little taken aback, but was struck by the practical nature of the suggestion. He pondered awhile, and then he spoke.

"That is a thought worthy of consideration," he said. "It were a foolish thing to waste the whole summer only to be deceived in the end.

"Peter," he added suddenly, as if struck by a new idea, "I am no fearer of water. I can dive and swim, and I have long wind, and can hold my breath a great while. Thinkest thou that if I were to leap into the well and dive to the bottom, thou couldst give me the rope when I reappeared, and with the aid of the ass pull me forth again? I can dive through the water, I trow, albeit the well is none too wide. But I could not climb the steep stone sides; thou and the ass must help me there."

Petronella was a little timid of the experiment lest harm should befall her brother, and persuaded him at last to tie the rope about him ere he dived, so that in the event of his striking his head, or in any other way hurting himself, she would have power to pull him up and out, even if he should have lost consciousness. After making her promise not to use this power unless she were fully persuaded he was in some difficulty and unable to help himself, Cuthbert consented to this amendment; and when all preparations were complete he balanced himself for a moment on the edge of the well, and then launched himself downwards in a line as straight as an arrow.

Eagerly and breathlessly Petronella watched for his reappearance, holding her own breath the while, as though in some way that would help the diver. He was long gone, as it seemed to her. She had been forced to take one deep respiration, and was almost tempted to pull at the rope in her hand, when the water suddenly became again disturbed and full of bubbles, and a head appeared above it again.

"Cuthbert!" she exclaimed, in a tone of glad relief, "O Cuthbert, what hast thou found?"

He was clinging to the rope with one hand; the other was beneath the water out of sight. He raised his eyes, and said between his gasping breaths:

"Draw me up; the water is chill as ice!"

From the sound of his voice she could not tell whether success had crowned the attempt or not. She turned without another word, and led the donkey onwards, gently drawing Cuthbert from the depths of the well. As she did so he gave a sudden shout of triumph, and springing over the side of the wall, flung at her feet a solid golden flagon richly chased, with the arms of the Trevlyns engraved upon it.

"I scarce dared to look at what I had got as I came up!" he cried, as he sprang high into the air in the exuberance of his spirit; "but that will lay all doubt at rest. The lost treasure of Trevlyn is lost no longer, and Cuthbert and Petronella have found it!"

Chapter 18: "Saucy Kate."

"Wife, what ails the child?"

Lady Frances Trevlyn raised her calm eyes from her embroidery, and gave one swift glance around the room, as if to make sure that she and her husband were alone.

"Dost thou speak of Kate?" she asked then in a low voice.

"Ay, marry I do," answered Sir Richard, as he took the seat beside the glowing hearth, near to his wife's chair, which was his regular place when he was within doors. "I scarce know the child again in some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long--as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about these merry moods, and the laugh will die away the moment she is alone, and a look will creep upon her face that I like not to see."

"Thou hast watched her something closely, Richard."

"Ay, truly I have. I would have watched any child of mine upon whom was passing so strange a change; but thou knowest that Kate has ever been dear to me--I have liked to watch her in her tricksy moods. She has been more full of affection for me than her graver sisters, and even her little whims and faults that we have had to check have but endeared her to me the more. The whimsies of the child have often brought solace to my graver cares. I love Kate right well, and like not to see this change in her. What dost thou think of it, goodwife?"

Lady Frances shook her head gravely.

"Methinks the child has something on her mind, and her sisters think so likewise, but what it is we none of us can guess. She keeps her secret well."

"It is not like Kate to have a secret; it is still less like her to hide it."

"That is what I feel. I have looked day by day and hour by hour for her to come to me or to thee to tell what is in her mind. But the weeks have sped by and her lips are still sealed, and, as thou sayest, she is losing her gay spirits, or else her gaiety is over wild, but doth not ring true; and there is a look in her eyes that never used to be there, and which I like not."

"I know the look well--one of wistful, unsatisfied longing. It goes to my heart to see it there. And hast thou noted that the bloom is paling in her cheeks, and that she will sit at home long hours, dreaming in the window seat or beside the hearth, when of old she was for ever scouring the woods, and coming home laden with flowers or ferns or berries? I like it not, nor do I understand it. And thou sayest her sisters know not the cause? I thought that young maidens always talked together of their secrets."

"Kate doth not. I have talked with Cecilia anent the matter, and she knows not the cause. Bess has opined that this change first appeared when it was decided that we went not to London this year, as we had talked of doing earlier in the summer. Bess says she noted then how disappointed Kate appeared; and she is of opinion that she has never been the same since."

Sir Richard stroked his beard with meditative gravity, and looked into the fire.

"It is true that the change has come upon her since that decision was made; and yet I find it something difficult to think that such was the cause. Kate never loved the life of the city, and was wild with delight when she first tasted the sweets of freedom in these woods and gardens. She loves her liberty right well, and has said a thousand times how glorious a thing it is to range at will as she does here. Capricious as the child has often shown herself, it is hard to believe that she is pining already for what she left with so glad a heart. It passes my understanding; I know not what to think."

Lady Frances raised her eyes for a moment to her husband's face, and then asked quietly:

"Hast thou ever thought whether some secret love may be the cause of all?"

The knight started and looked full at his wife.

"I have indeed thought some such thing, but I can scarce believe that such is the case with our Kate."

"Yet it is often so when maidens change and grow pale and dreamy, and sit brooding and thinking when erst they laughed and played. Kate is double the woman she was six months gone by. She will sit patiently at her needle now, when once she would throw it aside after one short hour; and she will seek to learn all manner of things in the still room and pantry that she made light of a short while back, as matters of no interest or concern to her. She would make an excellent housewife if she had the mind, as I have always seen; and now she does appear to have the mind, save when her fits of gloom and sadness be upon her, and everything becomes a burden."

Sir Richard looked aroused and interested. A smile stole over his face.

"Our saucy Kate in love, and that secretly! Marry, that is something strange; and yet I am not sorry at the thought, for I feared her fancy was something too much taken by her cousin Culverhouse; and since his father must look for a large dower for his son's bride, our Kate could never have been acceptable to him. Nor do I like the marriage of cousins so close akin, albeit in these times men are saying that there be no ill in such unions."

Lady Frances shook her head gravely.

"I would sooner see daughter of mine wedded in a lowlier sphere. My heart shrinks from the thought of seeing any child of ours in the high places of this world. There be snares and pitfalls abounding there. We have seen enough to know so much. There be bitter strivings and envyings and hatreds amongst those of lofty degree. I would have my children wed with godly and proper men; but I would sooner give them to simple gentlemen of no high-sounding title, than to those whose duties in life will call them to places round about the throne, and will throw them amidst the turmoil of Court life."

Sir Richard smiled at this unworldly way of looking at things; but the Trevlyns had suffered from being somewhat too well known at Court, and he understood the feeling.

"Truly we live in perilous times," he said thoughtfully, "and obscurity is often the best security for happiness and well being. But to return to Kate. If she is truly forgetting her girlish fancy for her cousin, as I would gladly believe--and she has not set eyes on him this year and more--towards whom can her fancy be straying?"

"Thou dost not think she can be pining after her cousin?"

"Nay, surely not," was the quick and decided answer. "Had she pined it would have been at the first, when they were separated from each other, and thou knowest how gay and happy she was then. It is but these past few months that we have seen the change. Depend upon it, there is some one else. Would that it might be good Sir Robert Fortescue, who has been here so