Moor Farm is situated among the wind-torn firs that line the ridge of ground which separates the sea heath between Bradmouth and Ramborough from the meadows that stretch inland behind it. Perhaps in the whole county there is no more solitary or desolate building, with its outlook on to the heath and the chain of melancholy meres where Samuel had waylaid Joan, beyond which lies the sea. The view to the west is more cheerful, indeed, for here are the meadows where runs the Brad; but, as though its first architect had determined that its windows should look on nothing pleasant, the house is cut off from this prospect by the straggling farm buildings and the fir plantation behind them. The homestead, which stands quite alone, for all the labourers employed about the place live a mile or more away in the valley, is large, commodious, and massively built of grey stone robbed from the ruins of Ramborough. When the Lacons, Joan’s ancestors on the mother’s side, who once had owned the place, went bankrupt, their land was bought by Samuel Rock’s grandfather, an eccentric man, but one who was very successful in his business as a contractor for the supply of hay to His Majesty’s troops. After he had been the possessor of Moor Farm for little more than a year, this James Rock went suddenly mad; and although his insanity was of a dangerous character, for reasons that were never known his wife would not consent to his removal to an asylum, but preferred to confine him in the house, some of the windows of which are still secured by iron bars. The end of the tale was tragic, for one night the maniac, having first stunned his keeper, succeeded in murdering his wife while she was visiting him. This event took place some seventy years before the date of the present story, but the lapse of two generations has not sufficed to dispel the evil associations connected with the spot, and that portion of the house where the murder was committed has remained uninhabited from that day to this.