midnight
One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-doors . Squire Beltham was master there : the other members of the household were , his daughter Dorothy Beltham ; a married daughter Mrs. Richmond ; Benjamin Sewis , an old half-caste butler ; various domestic servants ; and a little boy , christened Harry Lepel Richmond , the squire 's grandson . Riversley Grange lay in a rich watered hollow of the Hampshire heath-country ; a lonely circle of enclosed brook and pasture , within view of some of its dependent farms , but out of hail of them or any dwelling except the stables and the head-gardener 's cottage . Traditions of audacious highwaymen , together with the gloomy surrounding fir-scenery , kept it alive to fears of solitude and the night ; and there was that in the determined violence of the knocks and repeated bell-peals which assured all those who had ever listened in the servants ' hall to prognostications of a possible night attack , that the robbers had come at last most awfully .