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.