Here, when I first told this story to a generation of schoolboys, long since dispersed over the face of this busy world, I concluded my tale, and returned to my study, but I was followed thither by some young and eager story-devourers, who, like Oliver Twist, “asked for more.”

“Please, sir, we want to know what became of the treasure?”

“Oh,” said I, “I forgot to mention that in Queen Mary’s reign, Cuthbert paid a visit to England in the train of the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Noailles, and found an opportunity of revealing the secret to the Queen. He was sent with some others to Glastonbury, and there they found the mouldering skeleton of Sir John Redfyrne, keeping watch over the chest.”

“But how did they know who he was?”

“The name was engraved on his sword, ‘John Redfyrne, Knight.’”

“Did Cuthbert know that it was his uncle?”

“Not at the time, nor for years afterwards.”

“I fancy,” said a youngster, “Cuthbert would still have preferred the name ‘Trevannion’ to ‘Redfyrne,’ even if he had known.”

“But what did they do with the treasure? Was the Abbey ever rebuilt?”

“No, for one of the conditions which the nobles, who held the Abbey lands, exacted when Mary restored the Papal Supremacy, was, that they should be left undisturbed in all their ill-gotten possessions: you may be sure that the gold was applied to such uses as the last Abbot himself would have approved.”

“But were old Giles and his wife alive then? did they ever see Cuthbert again?” enquired a chubby little fellow.

“He yet lived, but the dear old dame had gone to her rest. Cuthbert’s visit was the last gleam of joy in the good old yeoman’s well-spent life: his foster son closed his eyes, and laid him to rest by the side of his beloved wife.”

“And did Cuthbert ever get the lands of Redfyrne?”

“No, for he never claimed them, and they passed to the next of kin.”

“But did Cuthbert have plenty of money?” cried a little fellow, anxiously.

“Yes, the King of France, Henry the Second, bestowed a valuable estate upon him, close by the Abbey of Bec, with the rank of Baron, in reward for his extraordinary valour, displayed when he led the forlorn hope at the taking of Metz, in 1552; which city remained a French fortress until the late Franco-German war.”

“And did he marry that Isabel Grey of Ashburton?”

“No, she married a fat and well-liking Devonshire squire.”

“Poor Cuthbert; what a shame!”

“Oh, you need not pity him; few people marry their first love; he found ample consolation in Eveline de Courcy, daughter of the baron, had many bright-eyed sons and daughters, and lived happy, as the story-books say, ‘ever afterwards.’”

“But how was it ever known who were his true parents: for it must have been found out, or we should never have had this tale,” said an older boy.

“You remember the good old priest of S. Mary of the Steppes in Exeter?”

“Yes,” cried several, “he was sent to fetch that Sir John Redfyrne to old Madge.”

“Well, after the death of the poor old woman, he found a sealed packet in her chamber, directed to himself, with the words, ‘To be opened in case of my sudden death,’ which revealed the truth, but he dared not act upon it at once, in favour of an attainted person, and against a court favourite: he waited his time. Meanwhile, in the early years of Edward the Sixth, the Devonshire rebellion broke out, and suspected of being implicated therein, he fled across the seas, and eventually, after many years, became a monk in the Abbey of Bec. There he discovered the identity of Cuthbert, then resident at the castle of Courcy, hard by, with the youth who so narrowly escaped the scaffold at Exeter. Then he revealed the secret to Father Ambrose, and he to Cuthbert.”

“Then why did not Cuthbert claim his own?” said many at once.

“Because he had already attained all he desired in France, and the England of Elizabeth, much as it is lauded by many, had no attractions for him: besides there would have been the old question of the Supremacy to have fought out again; I am not in a position to say that his opinions had undergone any change on that point, and otherwise he could not have lived in peace in his native land.”

“But he was wrong in contending for the supremacy of the Pope, was he not?” said an incipient theologian.

“Undoubtedly; but as a modern historian, not usually credited with Catholic sympathies, says of the Carthusian martyrs who died for the same belief, ‘We will not regret their cause; there is no cause for which any man can more nobly suffer, than to witness that it is better for him to die than to speak words which, he does not mean?’”[58]

“What a wicked monster Henry the Eighth must have been!”

“Yet he had, perhaps, the majority of the nation with him; and doubtless his heart was hardened by continued prosperity and the flattery which he breathed as his vital air. I shall never forget the solemn thoughts which came upon me when I once stood over the plain stone which marks his grave at Windsor: the remembrance of his many victims, the devout Catharine, the stately Wolsey, the learned More, the pious Fisher, the faithful monks of the Charterhouse, the Protestant martyrs, the gallant Surrey, and a host of others. Then came the thought, he has long since met his victims at the judgment-seat, and he and they have been judged by One ‘too wise to err, too good to be unkind;’ let us leave him to that judgment, which also awaits us all. But hark, there is the Chapel bell.”

Exeunt omnes.