Any information you will kindly afford me, however apparently trivial, may be of service in the affair I am prosecuting.
_The Rector._ To be sure, to be sure! But, you see, though I've heard a good deal of the Haygarths, it is all gossip--the merest gossip.

People are so fond of gossip, you know--especially country people: I have no doubt you have remarked that.

Yes, I have heard a great deal about Matthew Haygarth.

My late clerk and sexton,--a very remarkable man, ninety-one when he died, and able to perform his duties very creditably within a year of his death--very creditably; but the hard winter of '56 took him off, poor fellow, and now I have a young man.

Old Andrew Hone--that was my late clerk's name--was employed in this house when a lad, and was very fond of talking about Matthew Haygarth and his wife.
She was a rich woman, you know, a very rich woman--the daughter of a brewer at Ullerton; and this house belonged to her--inherited from her father.
_Myself_.