He saw the giant oak rise up before him in the moonlight, and he hastened to the spot and stood beneath the overhanging branches.
Standing beneath it with the oak behind him, he looked straight along the way he had come across the bog and moss.

Surely there were nine miles, and little more or less, between the one spot and the other.

And again, with the oak behind there was a beech at his right hand, and straight before him the road to the pixies' dell.
Well, it might not be much, yet it seemed like a link in the chain.
Esther had perchance heard Robin mutter these numbers in his troubled sleep.

Surely he had been thinking or dreaming of that long nine miles' tramp, and the words he had used to direct the men whom afterwards he had foully and treacherously murdered! "I am on the track! I am on the track!" cried Cuthbert exultantly, as he pursued his way.

"The secret lies hid in the pixies' dell.
Surely if I have learned as much as that, I cannot be long in finding out the whole!" And with thoughts of his sister, of Cherry, of Kate, warm in his heart, Cuthbert sped gaily along in the direction of his old home.
Midnight struck from the clock in the turret of Trevlyn Chase as the youth approached the gray walls of the old Gate House.