William Beach, surveyor, arrived about midday at the small station of a south Dorchester village, and shouldered his bag and instruments to walk across to the Inn, where he had already telegraphed earlier in the day for a room. His surveying, having little to do with the account of his distressing subsequent adventures, may be left at once out of the story; but the fact that the Inn was in the throes of temporary building operations is important to mention, since it led to the landlord’s directing him to the only place in all the length and breadth of the scattered hamlet where accommodation was likely, or even possible⁠—the farmhouse half way up the hill. “That dark old house where you see the smoke ’anging about the trees,” he pointed. “Garfit’s away, but his missus’ll find you a place. That is,” he added quickly, by way of correction, “if you ain’t too partickler.” “Anything wrong with it, d’you mean?” asked the surveyor. “Oh, I don’t say there’s nothing wrong with it,” said the man, emphasising a word in every phrase, “I’m not one to criticise my neighbours at any time, and I’ve known of other gentlemen sleepin’ there quite comfortable. Any’ow there’s no other house to take you!” And he looked savagely at his own dilapidated hostel as though it cut him to the heart to send a customer elsewhere. Now there was something in the tone of the disappointed Innkeeper and in his curiously suggestive choice of words that combined to affect the surveyor disagreeably and make him vaguely conscious of a certain depression of spirits. He slipped at once into a minor key, and when he turned a corner of the sandy path and found himself suddenly face to face with the old grey-stoned Tudor house, massive of wall and irregular of shape, its forbidding aspect produced so marked an impression on him that he instinctively hesitated trying to seize the actual definite quality that caused gloom to hang about it like a cloud; and wondering rather uncomfortably how, and why, so picturesque a building, bucking against a whole hill-side of heather⁠—there in the full flood of midday sunshine should contrive to present so dolorous and lugubrious an appearance, For this first view at close quarters struck the dominant note of the place with undeniable⁠—vividness; the impression it conveyed was unpleasant; but “sinister” was the word that at once leaped to his mind.