An English Squire

In bringing this tale in a complete form before the public, I should wish it to be understood that it arose out of a series of conversations with a friend who suggested the character of Alvar Lester, to the original invention of which I can lay no claim whatever. He came to me from his Spanish home, and I have done nothing with him but turn him into an English Squire.
C.R. Coleridge.
“A little more than kin, and less than kind.”
“Young barbarians all at play.”
Some few years ago Mr Gerald Lester was the head of a family of good blood and position, and the owner of Oakby Hall, the great house of a village of the same name in the county of Westmoreland. The border line between Westmoreland and Yorkshire crossed his property; but his house and park were in the former county, for which he was a deputy sheriff and justice of the peace.
He was not a man of very large fortune, and Oakby Hall was not a show place, but a well-built mansion of the last century, with some architectural pretensions, and standing in the midst of that sort of wild and romantic scenery which, perhaps more than any other, fixes the affections of its inhabitants. Oakby, at any rate, was very dear to its owner.
The great sweeps of heather-clad moor, the fell sides, with their short green turf, the fertile valleys, had a character of their own, inferior as they were to the better-known parts of Westmoreland.
Oakby village was situated in one of the largest of these valleys, and the Hall lay low on the side of a hill over which the well-planted park stretched on either side. The house could be seen all the way up the long carriage drive, for it was only shut off from the park by an iron railing, within which the turf was mown close and fine, instead of being left to be cropped by sheep and cattle. The gardens were at the side, and there were no trees in front of the house but one oak of great size and beauty. There was a wide carriage sweep, and the space between this and the house was paved, and on either side of the front-door was a stone wolf of somewhat forbidding aspect—the crest of the Lesters.