unpaved streets, getting wet, gray glimpses of old houses in
old gardens, and every now and then a pink crape-myrtle blushing in
the pouring rain. Hyndsville was, it seemed, one of those sprawling,
easy-going old Carolina towns that liked plenty of elbow-room and
wasn't particular about architectural order. Hynds House itself was
on the extreme edge of things.

The hack presently stopped before a high iron gate in a waist-high
brick wall with a spiked iron railing on top of it, the whole
overrun with weeds and creepers. Of Hynds House itself one couldn't
see anything but a stack of chimneys above a forest of trees.

The gate creaked and groaned on its rusty hinges; then we were
walking up a weedy, rain-soaked path where untrimmed branches
slapped viciously at our faces, and tough brambles, like snares and
gins, tried to catch our feet. On each side was a jungle. Of a
sudden the path turned, widened into a fairly cleared space; and
Hynds House was before us.

We had expected a fair-sized dwelling-house in its garden. And there
confronted us, glooming under the gray and threatening sky that
seemed the only proper and fitting canopy for it, what looked like a
pile reared in medieval Europe rather than a home in America. Its
stained brick walls, partly covered with ivy and lichens; its
smokeless chimneys; its barred doors; its many shuttered windows,
like blind eyes--all appeared deliberately to thrust aside human
habitancy.

_A residence for woman, child, and man,
A dwelling-place,--and yet no habitation;
A House,--but under some prodigious ban
Of Excommunication._

Yet there was nothing ruinous about it, for the Hyndses had sought
to build it as the old Egyptians sought to build their temples--to
last forever, to defy time and decay. It was not only meant to be a
place for Hyndses to be born and live and die in: it was a monument
to Family Pride, a brick-and-granite symbol of place and power.

The walls were of an immense thickness, the corners further
strengthened with great blocks of granite. The house had but two
stories, with an attic under its sloping roofs, but it gave an
effect of height as well as of solidity. Behind it was another brick
building, the lower part of which had been used for stables and
carriage house, and the upper portion as quarters for the house
slaves, in the old days. Another smaller building, slate-roofed and
ivy covered, was the spring-house, w