'God bless my soul!' exclaimed the old clergyman with a little start. 'This is really providential, quite providential. I knew Wootton Mandeville when I was a boy--every stone in it. Dear me! and so you come from Wootton Mandeville, do you? Ah, well, I'm afraid all the people I knew at Wootton must be dead long ago. There was old Susan who sold apples at the corner by the Buddie, where the coach used to stop to set down passengers; she must have been dead, well, before you were born, I should say, certainly. And old Jack Legge that drove the coach; a fine old fellow, he was, with a green patch on the eye that Job Puddicombe blinded; I can remember his giving me a lift, as what we used to call a super--defrauding his employers, I'm sorry to say; but in the West Country, you know, in the old days, people did those things and thought no harm of them. And Ginger Radford, the smuggler; I'm afraid he was a bad lot, poor man, but by Jove, what a fine, hearty, open, manly fellow. Ah yes, capital people, even the worst of them, those good old-fashioned West Country folks.' The old clergyman paused a moment to wipe his glasses, and looked at Minna pensively. Minna began to notice now that, though his face was so very dreadful to look at, his eyes were tender and bright and fatherly. Perhaps after all he wasn't really quite so terrible as she at first imagined him. 'Ah,' Mr. O'Donovan went on, replacing his spectacles, 'and there was Dick Churchill and his son Fiddler Sam, too, who used to draw pictures. You might have known Fiddler Sam; though, bless my heart, even Sam must be an old man nowadays, for he was older than I was. And then there was Fisherman Wroe, and his son Geargey; fine young fellow, Geargey, with a powerful deal of life and spirit in him--why.... God bless my soul, they said your name was Miss Wroe, didn't they? If I may venture to ask you, now--excuse me if I'm wrong--you don't happen to be a daughter of George Wroe's of Wootton, do you?' 'Yes,' Minna answered, warming a little towards the old gentleman, in spite of his repulsive countenance (it didn't look half so bad already, either, and she noticed that when once you got accustomed to the broken nose, it began to beam with courtesy and benevolence.) 'I'm George Wroe's daughter.'