How did the Grimshaws come by their money? That was the question the country-folk asked of one another over their pipes and ale, a question also that the revenue gentlemen had attempted to solve in vain. No one knew save Isaac, old Ursula, and Dan, of the chest buried in the deeps of the forest, stuffed with guineas, jewels, and ingots of gold. No one knew that Bess, old Ursula’s foster-child, was a strangeling in Pevensel from over the sea. Twenty years had passed since the _Richmond Lass_ had been scuttled in a fog off Beachy Head, after her captain had been murdered and certain of the crew. An English officer and his wife had shared the same fate, paying with their lives for the treasure they carried with them. Four sailors—two Irishmen, a Hollander, and a Portuguese—had come ashore by night in the jolly-boat with a heavy chest and the dead officer’s daughter, a child of three. They had scuttled the jolly-boat, after filling her with stones, and, striking cross-country, had disappeared with the child into the forest of Pevensel. Only Isaac and Ursula knew the end of the tale, and John, Isaac’s eldest son, who had died five years later. The four sailors had lodged at the Grimshaws, bargained with Isaac, and, after drinking heavily, had been murdered in their sleep. The treasure-chest hidden in the forest, four skeletons buried under an old oak, the girl Bess, were all that recalled that tragedy of the sea.
It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and snow had fallen heavily for a night and a day. The sky had cleared towards sunset, showing the west red above the white hills and the snow-capped trees. The moon was full that night, and her splendor turned Pevensel into a wilderness of witchcraft and white magic, an endless maze of tall, silent trees struck mute betwixt the moonlight and the snow.
Old Ursula Grimshaw, Isaac’s sister, lived alone with Bess in the cottage nearest to the woods. Pine-boughs overhung the roof, and the allies of the forest ran black and solemn from the very walls. Whin, whortleberry, heather, and the blown wind-rack of the trees had conquered one-half of the little garden. Bess and old Ursula were the pair whom Richard Jeffray had passed the day before, tending hogs in the beechwood by the road.