“There be many of them,” answered Cherry, still speaking in a very low and rapid whisper.  “But breathe not a word at home, for father says they be surely in league with the devil, if they be not impostors who deserve whipping at the cart’s tail.  But Rachel went to one three years back, and the dame told her a husband would come wooing within three short months, and told the colour of his hair and his eyes.  And sure enough it all came true, and now she is quickly to be wed.  And others have done the like, and the things have all come true.  And she is not a wicked woman neither, for she cures agues and fevers, and the leeches themselves ask her simples of her.  There may be wicked women plying this trade too; I know not how that may be.  But this dame is not wicked; Rachel goes to her still, and she has never deceived her yet.  But she liveth very secretly now, as a wise woman must needs to in these times; for the King, they say, is very wroth against all such, and in the country men are going about from him and burning all who practise such arts, and otherwise cruelly maltreating them.  So no man speaks openly of them now, though they still ply their trade in secret.”

“Hast thou ever been to one thyself, Cherry?”

Her face was all in a glow.  She clung closer to Cuthbert’s arm.

“Chide me not, and tell not my father; but I went with Rachel once, when she went to have a wart charmed that was causing her much vexation.  I asked nothing of the dame myself; but she took my hand and looked into my eyes, and she nodded her head and chuckled and made strange marks upon a bit of paper, which she said was casting my horoscope.  And then she told me that I had an ugly lover that I loved not, but that another more gently born should come in time, and that we should love each other well and be faithful through all, and that I should end by being a lady with all I wanted at command.”

And there Cherry stopped, blushing and palpitating with happiness and shy joy; whilst Cuthbert, struck by this very remarkable and original specimen of fortune telling, began to think he might do worse than consult this same wise woman who had gauged his sweetheart’s case so fairly.

He himself had no scruples.  He had a strong belief in necromancy, and had never heard that there was sin in its practice.  He was still Romanist enough at heart to look upon the confessional as an easy and pleasant way of getting rid of the burden of an uneasy conscience.  His mind was very open to conviction and impression in religious matters.  He was no bigot, but he had a constitutionally inherited tendency towards the old faith that was possibly stronger than he knew.  Had he seen his father’s party in power, persecuting and coercing, he would have had scant sympathy or love for them and their ways; but as the contrary was now the case, and he saw them downtrodden and abused, he felt considerable drawings towards them, and these drawings were not the less strong from the intercourse he was enjoying almost daily with Anthony Cole and his son Walter.