In the fading light he could see both plainly. Long Robin was
seated upon a low stone wall overgrown with moss, that seemed to be
built around a well; for it was of circular construction, and to
the listener was borne the faint sound of running water, though the
sound seemed to come from the very heart of the earth. Round this
well was a space of smooth greensward--sward that appeared to have
been untouched for centuries. All around, the sides of the dell
rose up, covered with a thick growth of wood and copse. It was a
lovely spot in all truth, but lonely to the verge of desolation.
Cuthbert dimly remembered having heard fragments of legends
respecting a pixies' dell in the heart of the forest--a dell
avoided by all, for that no man who ventured in came forth alive.
Most likely this was the place; most likely the legend of fear
surrounding it was due to some exaggerated version of old Robin's
ghastly crime in bygone years.

Cuthbert gazed and gazed with a sense of weird fascination. He
fully believed that in some spot not many yards from where he stood
lay hidden the lost treasure of Trevlyn, and that the secret of
that resting place remained known to one man only in the whole
world; and that was the man before him!

A wild impulse seized Cuthbert to spring upon that bowed figure,
and, holding a knife to the man's throat, to demand a full
revelation of that secret as the price of life. Perhaps had he not
seen but an hour before how upright, powerful, and stalwart that
bending figure could be, he would have done it then and there. But
with that memory clear in his mind, together with his knowledge of
the perfectly unscrupulous character of the gipsy, he felt that
such a step would be the sheerest madness; and after gazing his