To call the home of the Chestnut family plantation, which overlooked the center of town from a low hill, a mansion must be overtly generous, yet there it stood in humble splendor, the Great House of Westlake. Westlake, a small town located in the flatter part of Franklin County, on the lake shore. Since its founding, the owners of the estate had been the mayor or sheriff of the village, of which much of it belonged anyway; and on the whole they voted according to their wishes. Cut off from the rest of the world, they were respected and held an authority they would have found lacking elsewhere. Although they are only a three-hour drive from Washington, few of them have ever traveled to the metropolis. Westlake is thirty miles from even the humblest of towns, but as a people of simple desires, except the adolescents, they are scarcely aware of their isolation. No one who claimed any importance to the outside world lived in this quiet country hamlet, except perhaps Kellie Chestnut; he was Westlake's angel, the nobility of his character and his constant affection...