The great house at Chad was wrapped in sleep.

The brilliant beams of a June moon illuminated the fine pile of gray masonry with a strong white light.

Every castellated turret and twisted chimney stood out in bold relief from the heavy background of the pine wood behind, and the great courtyard lay white and still, lined by a dark rim of ebon shadow.
Chad, without being exactly a baronial hall of the first magnitude, was nevertheless a very fine old house.

It had been somewhat shorn of its pristine glories during the Wars of the Roses.

One out of its original two quadrangles had then been laid in ruins, and had never been rebuilt.