The action of this novel is set in central New York near Unadilla Creek, a tributary to the headwaters of the Susquehanna River. There, in what was then (1765) frontier country, the British Captain Hugh Willoughby has just taken possession of a 7,000-acre patent. His first move toward settling his holdings is to drain a 400-acre beaver pond and establish a farm on the rich alluvial soil of its bottom. In the center of the pond there had been a rocky island rising forty feet above the water, and on this eminence the captain builds first some huts--hence the "Hutted Knoll"--and later a large house. (Both the building and its site are known as the Hutted Knoll and Beaver Manor.) Although their daughters, Beulah and Maud (adopted), remain in school at Albany, and their son, Robert, serves in the army, Captain Hugh and his wife, Wilhelmina, move to this new home with a number of workers, some slaves, some regular employees. Among the latter are Joel Strides, a selfish and calculating Connecticut Yankee, Michael O'Hearn, a comic Irishman recently arrived from County Leitrim, and Saucy Nick, an outcast Tuscarora who had introduced Captain Willoughby to the area. Not so much servant as member of the household is the Rev. Mr. Jedediah Woods, former chaplain of the retired captain's infantry company.