been to
school three months a year ever since I was so high," Ralph indicated
the height with his hand. "But grandpa would never let me go off any
very great distance from home."

"So you finally took matters into your own hands and gave him leg bail.
Well, that ain't bad. But you mustn't go about breaking into people's
houses and cars as you did last night. It isn't safe."

"I was lost, and it began to rain. I didn't mean no harm. I can pay
my way."

He drew forth some money, under a dim idea that he had heard some one
say once, that below the mountains, folks made people pay for about
everything they got.

"Keep your cash, my boy," said the man evidently having a better idea
of Ralph than at first. "Hold to all you've got. People are not as
free with their grub and beds down here as they are up in your country.
By the way, what's your name?"

"Ralph Granger. What might be yours?"

"Mine? Oh, my name is Quigg--Lemuel Quigg. I am a traveling
photographer."

"What is that?"

"Did I ever see such ignorance! Ralph, you are a curiosity. I take
pictures for a living. Usually I go by wagon. But I am bound for the
seacoast, so I hired this car to take me right through."

"There was a fellow up in our parts once as took pictures for two bits
apiece."

"Like these?" Mr. Quigg threw open one lid of a trunk, disclosing a
velvet lined show case filled with photographs of different sizes.

They would now be considered antiquated affairs, but to Ralph the
life-like attitudes and looks of the sitters seemed wonderful.

"Gracious, no!" he exclaimed. "That fellow only took little tintypes,
as we folks call them. These beat anything I ever saw."

"Well, suppose we get breakfast," said Quigg, turning to his oil stove.
"We'll be in Hendersonville in an hour. Can you cook?"

Ralph staggered to the stove, and took a puzzled look.

"I've cooked on a fireplace all my life, more or less. But I don't
think much of that thing."

"Don't, eh? Well, well! You'll do for a dime museum, you will. Go
and sit down, and watch me."

Ralph took a seat near the door, and divided his time between Mr.
Quigg's culinary operations and the swiftly moving panorama outside.

The dizzy, yet smooth, motion of the car, the--to him--miraculous
speed, the whirl and shimmer of the landscape--all this fascinated him
after his first nervousness wore off.

The artist, however, recalled him from this sort of day dreaming, by
sa