"That I know not," answered Kate, and she drew a little nearer to
her cousin. "Cuthbert, dost thou believe in old saws? Dost thou
believe those predictions which run in old families, and which men
say work themselves out sometimes--in after generations?"

"I scarce know," answered Cuthbert, "I hear so little and see so
little. I know not why they should not be true. Men of old used to
look into the future, and why not now? But why speakest thou thus,
sweet cousin?"

"Marry that will I tell thee, Cuthbert; but my mother chides me for
such talk, and says it befits not a discreet and godly maiden. Yet
I had it from mine own grandam, my father's mother, and she was a
godly woman, too."

"And what did she tell thee?"

"My grandam was a Wyvern," said Kate, "as perchance thou knowest,
since the match pleased not thy father. And she was not the first
Wyvern who had married a Trevlyn. It was Isabel Wyvern, her aunt,
who had wedded with the redoubtable Sir Richard who had burnt the
old witch, and I trow had he been married when the old beldam was
brought before him he would have dealt more mercifully with her;
for the Wyverns ever protected and helped the gipsy folk, and
thought better of them than the rest of the world. Well, be that as
it may, my grandam had many stories about them and their strange
ways, their fashion of fortune telling and divining, and the
wonderful things they could foretell. Many a time had a Wyvern been
saved from danger and perhaps from death by a timely warning from