The Chambellans were an old Yorkshire family, which once had held a high place among the landed gentry of the county. A knight of that family had been a Crusader in the army of Richard Cœur de Lion; and now he lay, with all his insignia about him, in the parish church, while others of his race reposed in the same chancel, under monuments and brasses, which spoke of their name and fame during their generation. In the lapse of time the family had become impoverished, and gradually merged into the class of yeomen, retaining only a remnant of the broad lands which had once belonged to them. In 1744-5, the elder branch of the family, consisting of the father, two sons, and a daughter, resided at what had once been the mansion-house. It had been built originally in the reign of Stephen, and was a curious specimen of different kinds of architecture, bearing traces of its gradual transformation from the stronghold of the days when it was no metaphor to say that every man’s house was his castle, down to the more peaceful dwelling of lawful and orderly times, It had now become little more than a better sort of farm-house. What had been the tilt-yard was filled with a row of comfortable barns, cart-sheds, and hay-stacks: a low wall of rough gray stones inclosed a small garden: a narrow gravel walk, edged on each side with currant-trees and gooseberry-bushes, led up to the fine old porch, embowered in the ivy and creepers which covered nearly the whole of the building with its luxuriant growth. The old gateway at the entrance of the yard was still surmounted with the “coat armor” of the family, carved in stone; but the gates themselves had long ago disappeared, and been replaced by a common wooden farm-yard gate. The “coat armor” itself was covered with moss, and a fine crop of grass and house-leek grew among the stones of the walls, to which it would have communicated a desolate appearance, if the farm-yard arrangements had been less orderly. Halsted Hall, as it was called, was six miles from the city of York, and stood about a mile from the main road. The only approach to it was by a long rough lane, so much cut up by the carts and cattle that it was almost impassable to foot-passengers, except in the height of summer or depth of winter, when the mud had been dried up by the sun or the frost.