The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn | Page 5

that conviction as well as
submission could be compelled--could be driven into the minds and
consciences of recalcitrant sons and daughters by sheer force and might.
Gnashing his teeth in fury, he sprang once more upon his son, winding
his strong arms about him, and fairly lifting him from the ground in his
paroxysm of fury.
"Go! ay, we will see about that. Go, and carry your false stories and
falser thoughts out into the world, and pollute others as you yourself
have been polluted! we will think of that anon. Here thou art safe in thy
father's care, and it will be well to think further ere we let so rabid a
heretic stray from these walls. Wretched boy! the devil himself must
sure have entered into thee. But fiends have been exorcised before now.
It shall not be the fault of Nicholas Trevlyn if this one be not quickly
forced to take flight!"
All this while the infuriated man had been partly dragging, partly
carrying his son to a dreary empty room in the rear of the dilapidated
old house inhabited by Nicholas and his children. It was a vault-like
apartment, and the roof was upheld in the centre by a stout pillar such
as one sees in the crypts of churches, and suspended round this pillar
were a pair of manacles and a leather belt. Cuthbert had many times
been tied up to this pillar before, his hands secured above his head in
the manacles, and his body firmly fastened to the pillar by the leather

thong. Sometimes he had been left many hours thus secured, till he had
been ready to drop with exhaustion. Sometimes he had been cruelly
beaten by his stern sire in punishment for some boyish prank or act of
disobedience. Even the gentle and timid Petronella had more than once
been fastened to the pillar for a time of penance, though the manacles
and the whip had been spared to her. The place was even now full of
terrors for her--a gruesome spot, always dim and dark, always full of
lurking horrors. Her eyes dilated with agony and fear as she beheld her
brother fastened up--not before his stout doublet had been
removed--and her knees almost gave way beneath her as her father
turned sharply upon her and said: "Where is the whip, girl?"
It was seldom that the maiden had the courage to resist her, stern father;
but today, love for her brother overcoming every other feeling, she
suddenly sank on her knees before him, clasping her hands in piteous
supplication, as she cried, with tears streaming down her face: "O
father, sweet father, spare him this time! for the love of heaven visit not
his misdoings upon him! Let me but talk to him; let me but persuade
him! Oh, do not treat him so harshly! Indeed he may better be won by
love than driven by blows!"
But Nicholas roughly repulsed the girl, so that she almost fell as he
brushed past her.
"Tush, girl! thou knowest not what thou sayest. Disobedience must be
flogged out of the heretic spawn. I will have no son of mine sell
himself to the devil unchecked. A truce to such tears and vain words! I
will none of them. And take heed that thine own turn comes not next. I
will spare neither son nor daughter that I find tampering with the
pestilent doctrines of heretics!"
So saying, the angry man strode away himself in search of the weapon
of chastisement, and whilst Petronella sobbed aloud in her agony of
pity, Cuthbert looked round with a strange smile to say: "Do not weep
so bitterly, my sister; it will soon be over, and it is the last beating I will
ever receive at his hands. This settles it--this decides me. I leave this
house this very night, and I return no more until I have won my right to
be treated no longer as a slave and a dog."

"Alas, my brother! wilt thou really go?"
"Ay, that will I, and this very night to boot."
"This night! But I fear me he will lock thee in this chamber here."
"I trust he may; so may I the better effect my purpose. Listen, sister, for
he will return right soon, and I must be brief. I have been shut up here
before, and dreaming of some such day as this, I have worked my way
through one of yon stout bars to the window; and it will fall out now
with a touch. Night falls early in these dark November days. When the
great clock in the tower of the Chase tolls eight strokes, then steal thou
from the house bearing some victuals in a wallet, and my good sword
and dagger and belt.