The story of Mr. Woodruff's liberation, and of his arrival at Kiddal Hall, accompanied by his deliverers, soon became known to the inhabitants of the district; and as the fact of Doctor Rowel's imprisonment, with all the main circumstances leading to and connected with it, had previously created no little sensation amongst them, the presence of James Woodruff excited universal attention. Numbers of idlers might have been seen lounging about the village of Bramleigh, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the Hall, anxious to pick up the smallest scrap of news respecting the strangers from any of the servants, and deeply desirous of catching even the most remote glimpse of any of the personages connected with those proceedings which, in one shape or another, occupied so much of their attention. Meanwhile Colin caused a special and cautious messenger to be despatched to Fanny Woodruff, for the purpose of informing her, in a manner the least likely to over-excite her feelings, of the arrival of her father at the Squire's mansion, and to appoint a particular hour on the ensuing day, when her meeting with him should take place, it being deemed most advisable on account of both parties to allow some portion of time to elapse before that meeting was permitted. Particular apartments were, in the mean time, appropriated to Mr. Woodruff, as being better adapted to his present state both of body and mind. To recapitulate at length the circumstances attendant on the meeting between poor James Woodruff and his daughter forms no part of my design. It is enough to state, that the feelings of each were wrought upon by that interview to the highest extreme; that hours seemed to them but as minutes; and that night scarcely separated them even temporarily without the bitterest tears. Some time afterwards, when the condition of all parties would allow of it without pain or danger, an entertainment upon a large scale was given at the Hall, at which every one of the individuals most interested were present, besides a considerable number of the neighbouring gentry, their wives and families, whose sympathies had been aroused by that bitter story of persecution and criminality, of which Mr. Woodruff had been made the victim; and while all lamented the past sorrows of that worthy man, they rejoiced with double feeling at the conclusion which was now put to his sufferings, and extolled in the highest terms the very humblest individual whose instrumentality had been required in the singular adventure that terminated in his release.