A
duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.

"It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."

"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.

"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
emigration."

"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"

"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
branch in your family?"

"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.

"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
Plymouth Rock."

I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.

"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
years."

"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
you not to pay any attention to that, madam."

My nerves was tingling with the thought