woody tracts of the forest were
frequently interspersed.

As he thus tramped the words of the verses began singing in his
head: "Three times three--o'er ling and moss." What was that three
times three? The question mingled with his dreams of his sister,
and suddenly the thought came to him, Could the three times three
be miles--miles from the giant oak from beneath which the treasure
had been taken? Three times three--it might well be so. The
distance was surely about nine miles. The spot where the Trevlyns
had hid their treasure lay directly in Cuthbert's way as he marched
steadily towards the Gate House. He saw the giant oak rise up
before him in the moonlight, and he hastened to the spot and stood
beneath the overhanging branches.

Standing beneath it with the oak behind him, he looked straight
along the way he had come across the bog and moss. Surely there
were nine miles, and little more or less, between the one spot and
the other. And again, with the oak behind there was a beech at his
right hand, and straight before him the road to the pixies' dell.
Well, it might not be much, yet it seemed like a link in the chain.
Esther had perchance heard Robin mutter these numbers in his
troubled sleep. Surely he had been thinking or dreaming of that
long nine miles' tramp, and the words he had used to direct the men
whom afterwards he had foully and treacherously murdered!

"I am on the track! I am on the track!" cried Cuthbert exultantly,
as he pursued his way. "The secret lies hid in the pixies' dell.
Surely if I have learned as much as that, I cannot be long in
finding out the whole!"

And with thoughts of his sister, of Cherry, of Kate, warm in his
heart, Cuthbert sped gaily along in the direction of his old home.

Midnight struck from the clock in the turret of Trevlyn Chase as
the youth approached the gray walls of the old Gate House. How grim
and hoary it looked in the white moonlight! Something of a faint
shiver of repulsion ran through Cuthbert's frame as he looked upon
the familiar outline of the building. Was it possible that all but
the few last months of his life had been spent there? It seemed to
him that the old life was already like a dim and distant dream, and
that the fuller life he had enjoyed since leaving was the only one
that had any reality about it.

But he well knew the habits and the sullen ferocity of the grim old
man his father, and it was with cautious steps that he approached
the walls