It professed to predict the
extinction of your family, or something of that sort, did it
not?"
"No inquiries," he went on, "have traced back that prophecy to
the time when it was first made; none of our family records tell
us anything of its origin. Old servants and old tenants of ours
remember to have heard it from their fathers and grandfathers.
The monks, whom we succeeded in the Abbey in Henry the Eighth's
time, got knowledge of it in some way, for I myself discovered
the rhymes, in which we know the prophecy to have been preserved
from a very remote period, written on a blank leaf of one of the
Abbey manuscripts. These are the verses, if verses they deserve
to be called:
When in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race--
When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky,
Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his
birth-- That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monkton's
line. Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left
master; From mortal ken, from light of day, Monkton's race shall
pass away."
"The prediction seems almost vague enough to have been uttered by
an ancient oracle," said I, observing that he waited, after
repeating the verses, as if expecting me to say something.
"Vague or not, it is being accomplished," he returned.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226