So Terry Armfield, who hitherto had never heard of Llanyglo and of whom Llanyglo had never heard, took over Fotty and the strip of land that ran down to Edward Garden's unfinished house, with, as it happened, extremely notable results. For nobody who knew Terry ever supposed that he made purchases of real estate solely upon his own account. He represented others; and it is perhaps significant that the nickname by which he was known among the members of the Syndicate which made use of him was borrowed from the slang of the "swell mob." He was called "The Minder." Now the Minder, as you ought not to know, is the gentleman who makes himself charming to you while the others consult about how much you may be worth, and how you may most conveniently be made worth less. Often, like Terry, he himself is not in the real councils of his allies. They want his looks, his candours, his repute, his address, and in Terry's case they especially wanted his powers remarkable of persuasion. Until it should be decided what people were to be persuaded of, Terry minded. Little did John Pritchard, tenant-farmer of Fotty, dream of the solicitude with which his farm was regarded by a number of people who had never seen it and did not want ever to see it. Little did he think that that middling oat-bearing land was being minded and brooded upon. Little did he imagine what interest, what benevolence, what affectionate regard ... or, to put it in plain English, he had no notion whatever that, instead of having Squire Wynne for a landlord, he was now the tenant of a set of prospectus-vendors of whom two or three were the same men who had held those hopeful views on the paying-quantities of manganese that could be obtained from that other property of Squire Wynne's, the Abercelyn mines, thirty miles further down the coast. The Corporation did not insist on manganese or on anything else. On the contrary, it was accommodating in the extreme. You paid your money and took your choice what commodity you found on its properties; you could have had tin, iron, copper, lead, anything you happened to fancy. It merely wished to be able to show, in case of need, its indefeasible title to real land, at Llanyglo or anywhere else, but the further from civilisation the better. It would be safer, and really not much dearer, to buy Pritchard's farm, than it would be to have to confess in open Court that the tin or iron or lead shares of which it was trying to create the value, unfortunately happened to have Pritchard's farm sitting on the top of them. "No, we'd better get hold of a bit of real land from somewhere," the Syndicate had said. "Better have it in a new name too. All Abercelyn names exempt for three years. Who is there?... What about Armfield?" All had agreed that Terry would make an excellent Minder.