The novel traces the decline of an ancient rural family and its estate across four connected episodes set at different houses in the same countryside. It follows the elderly squire and his children as economic hardship, changing agriculture, and the First World War erode traditional wealth and status; one son dies in the fighting, another returns to assume responsibility, while a third pursues the church. Domestic tensions, local rivalries, and the struggle to manage farms and woodlands expose generational differences and shifting social expectations. Evocations of place — manor, parsonage, tenant farms, and outlying homesteads — shape a portrait of continuity and dissolution in a rural community.