For a while the fearful sounds of hooting and laughter continued, under cover of which he crept nearer and nearer to the centre of the dell. Presently they ceased, and a death-like silence ensued. Cuthbert dared not move, and scarcely dared to breathe. This was the most trying experience he had yet had. He had felt far less fear on the darkly-flowing river and in that strange underground cellar, against both of which the wise woman had warned him. But after a long pause of silence he heard another and a different laugh--a laugh in which he recognized the sardonic intonation he had recently heard from the lips of Long Robin. "I trow that has been enow," spoke a voice nigh at hand, though the speaker was invisible owing to the thick growth of bushes. "If that sound were caused by aught but a rabbit or wildcat, I wager the hardy traveller has taken to his heels and fled. But I misdoubt me that it was anything human. There be sounds and to spare in the forest at night. It is long since I have been troubled by visitors to this lone spot. The pixies and I have the dell to ourselves. Ha, ha!" "Robin's voice again!" whispered Cuthbert to himself, creeping forward with the cautious, snake-like movement that he had learned when snaring birds or rabbits to furnish the scanty larder at the Gate House. He advanced by slow degrees, and soon gained what he desired--a view of his quarry and of the heart of the dell. 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!