The house in which James dwelt, and under the roof of which both the brothers had been born, was known as Loudwater House, through having, once on a time, been the domicile of an old county family of that name. It was a handsome and substantial red-brick structure of the early Georgian period, with a good deal of ornamental stonework about it, and stood fronting the river Laming (for Merehampton is between three and four miles up stream from the sea) on what in these latter days was known as the Quay-side, but which at the time the house was built had doubtless been either green fields or private grounds pertaining to it. So long ago, however, was it since that part of the river had been banked in and the Quay-side called into existence, and since its row of ugly warehouses had been erected, each with its crane protruding from its second or third storey, and each with its suite of gloomy offices on the ground floor, that not even the oldest inhabitant of Merehampton could remember the place as being other than it was now. It was only a matter of course that, having become the home of a commercial family, the Georgian mansion should, to some extent, be put to commercial uses. Thus it had come to pass that the groundfloor rooms had been turned in part into offices and in part into a warehouse, with an additional room in which were stored cordage, blocks, sails, spars, chains and tools of various kinds, together with a miscellaneous assortment of maritime gear and appliances. There could be but little doubt that Merehampton had passed the zenith of its prosperity as a seaport. With the opening of the railway a vital blow had been struck at the shipping interests of the little town. The coasting trade had dwindled by degrees to less than half of what it had been a few years before; some of the merchants and shippers had become bankrupt; others had taken themselves and their capital elsewhere; others, on the principle of half a loaf being better than none, had made the best of what could not be helped; half the warehouses on the Quay-side were untenanted; but through it all the firm of Melray Brothers had held manfully on its way, although in the face of a sorely diminished trade. James Melray's household was a small one, comprising, as it did, only himself, his mother--a venerable lady between seventy and eighty years of age--who had her own suite of rooms and her own maid and companion, and, lastly, the merchant's girl-wife, who at the time the tragedy took place had been married to him some two and a half years.