westlake

To call the plantation house of the Chestnut family, which looked down upon the town center from a lowly hill, a mansion is to be overtly generous, yet there it stood in humble splendour, the Great House of Westlake. Westlake, a small town situated in the flattest part of Franklin County on the shore of the Lake. From it’s founding, the masters of the estate had been the Mayor or Sheriff of the village, with a grand portion of it belonging to them anyway; and as a whole voted according to their wishes. Cut off from the rest of the world, they were respected and held an authority, which they would have found wanting elsewhere.

Although only three hour drive from Washington, few of them have ever gone to the metropolis. Westlake is thirty miles from even the humblest of cities, but being a people of simple desires they, save the teenagers, are scarcely aware of their isolation. No one with any claim to any importance to the outside world lived in this quiet country hamlet, except maybe Kellie Chestnut; she was Westlake’s angel, the nobleness of her disposition, and her constant affect...