It was raining hard now, with dense sheets of water beating against the insecure roof, walls, and windows, and sending in drops through a thousand chinks and crevices. Moisture trickled down to the floor from unsuspected places, and the mounting wind rattled the rotting, loose-hinged shutters outside. But I minded none of this, nor even thought of my roadster outside beneath the trees, for I saw that a story was coming. Incited to reminiscence, my host made a move to show me to sleeping-quarters, but kept on recalling older, better days. Soon, I saw, I might learn why he lived alone in that ancient place, and why his neighbors thought it full of undesirable influences. His voice was very musical as he spoke on, and his tale soon took a turn which left me no chance to grow drowsy. "Yes, Riverside was built in 1816, and my father was born here in 1828. He died young, so young I can just barely remember him. In '64, he was killed in the war--Seventh Louisiana Infantry, C.S.A.--for he went back to the old home to enlist. My grandfather was too old to fight, yet he lived on to be ninety-five, and helped my mother bring me up: good bringing-up, too, I'll give them credit. We always had strong traditions, high notions of honor, and my grandfather saw to it that I grew up the way de Russys have grown up, generation after generation, ever since the Crusades. We weren't quite wiped out financially, and managed to get on very comfortably after the war. I went to a good school in Louisiana, and later to Princeton. Later on I was able to get the plantation on a fairly profitable basis, though you see what it's come to now. "My mother died when I was twenty, and my grandfather two years later. It was rather lonely after that; and in '85 I married a distant cousin in New Orleans. Things might have been different if she'd lived, but she died when my son Denis was born. Then I had only Denis. I didn't try marriage again, but gave all my time to the boy. He was like me, like all the de Russys, darkish and tall and thin, and with the devil of a temper. I gave him the same training my grandfather had given me, but he didn't need much training when it came to points of honor. It was in him. Never saw such high spirit--all I could do to keep him from running away to the Spanish War when he was eleven! Romantic young devil, too full of high notions--you'd call 'em Victorian, now--no trouble at all to make him let the nigger wenches alone. I sent him to the same school I'd gone to, and to Princeton, too. He was Class of 1909.