` Did n't you know it was -- ' Puck held up his hand to stop him , and Kadmiel , who never noticed , went on . ` When the tide dropped he thought he stood on old armour , but feeling with his toes , he raked up bar on bar of soft gold . Some wicked treasure of the old days put away , and the secret cut off by the sword . I have heard the like before . ' ` So have we , ' Una whispered . ` But it was n't wicked a bit . ' ` Elias took a little of the stuff with him , and thrice yearly he would return to Pevensey as a chapman , selling at no price or profit , till they suffered him to sleep in the empty room , where he would plumb and grope , and steal away a few bars . The great store of it still remained , and by long brooding he had come to look on it as his own . Yet when we thought how we should lift and convey it , we saw no way . This was before the Word of the Lord had come to me . A walled fortress possessed by Normans ; in the midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many horse-loads of gold ! Hopeless ! So Elias wept . Adah , his wife , wept too . She had hoped to stand beside the Queen 's Christian tiring-maids at Court when the King should give them that place at Court which he had promised . Why not ? She was born in England -- an odious woman . ` The present evil to us was that Elias , out of his strong folly , had , as it were , promised the King that he would arm him with more gold . Wherefore the King in his camp stopped his ears against the Barons and the people . Wherefore men died daily .
Adah so desired her place at Court , she besought Elias to tell the XXXXX where the treasure lay , that the King might take it by force , and -- they would trust in his gratitude .
Adah Barons Court Kadmiel King Puck Una daily horse-loads yearly