The Lake of Wine by Bernard Capes — Read

About mid-day Mr. Tuke sat himself down, like a man thoroughly wearied, in his great flagged hall -- which, with a fancifulness of conceit, he had dubbed his dining-room -- and summarized, with a completely depressed air, the fruits of his morning's exploration. Briefly, these included, in the matter of "furnished apartments," the chamber in which he rested -- whereof the plainest of necessaries was comprised in a table and a few chairs; his bedroom, already described; two little closets in the north wing, appropriated to Dennis and his sister, and very modestly equipped; and a kitchen embellished with a basketful of odd pots and pans. For the rest, a score of rooms, large and small -- of direct access, or approached by way of tortuous passages, whereby unexpected steps to nowhere were the least harmful of many pitfalls and obstructions -- represented the present value of his inheritance, and so far as they went, a purely negative one, inasmuch as it seemed that the small fortune that would be required to put them into a moderate state of repair, would be sufficient to purchase elsewhere a messuage in sound and habitable condition.

And, without, it had been the same. The stables, substantial as the house, were in a like condition of neglect. His horse he had found ensconced in a battered stall and feeding out of a bushel basket. All the contiguous offices, of less durable material than the main building -- which was of stone, coated with some form of plaster -- were lamentably dilapidated and threatening to a collapse that should be general.