“Dork?” said he.  “There doesn’t seem to be any Dork, but here is Dorkminster.  Now if that was your family name we’d have it all here.  No doubt you know all about that family.  It’s a grand old family, isn’t it?  Isn’t it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to America?”

Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the family-tree-man said.  I knew very well that the same family name was often different in different countries, changes being made to suit climates and people.

“Minster has a religious meaning, hasn’t it?” said I.

“Yes, madam,” said he; “it relates to cathedrals and that sort of thing.”

Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever told me about her father was in any ways related to religion.  They was mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it didn’t seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of being religious, and perhaps he mightn’t have cared for the cathedral part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my mother had told me.  I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was often done.

“Now, then,” said he, “let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace out your connection with that.  From what place did your ancestors come?”

It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was telling me, and I said to him:  “That is what I want to find out.  What is the family home of the Dorkminsters?”

“Oh, they were a great Hampshire family,” said he.  “For five hundred years they lived on their estates in Hampshire.  The first of the name was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most likely was given those estates for his services.  Then we go on until we come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say doesn’t now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell.”

You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I listened to those words.  William the Conqueror!  An ancestral abbey!  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.”