d a cornet from somewhere among his
belongings, and played sundry doleful airs with indifferent skill,
until the train arrived at Hendersonville.

"What do you call that brass horn?" asked Ralph.

"A brass horn! Come! That's good." Quigg laughed loudly. "That is a
cornet, and a good one, too! But here we are."

Hendersonville, though but a moderate sized town, seemed to the
mountain boy to contain all the world's wonders. Both car doors were
thrown wide open, and as they had to remain on a siding until an
express went by, Ralph indulged his curiosity fully.

The two and three story buildings, nicely painted and standing so close
together, the teams, the stores, the shouting negroes and hurrying
whites, were all a startling novelty to him.

"Looks like everybody is a rushin' as if he'd forgot something," he
thought. "What a sight of niggers! Good Lord! What's that?"

This last he uttered aloud as the express whizzed by them at a moderate
rate of speed.

"That's the train we were waiting for. Now we'll get on, I guess. You
see, our train is a freight, and we have to make way for pretty much
everything."

Presently their car began to move. As they passed the depot an engine
close by blew a whistle, at which the boy started.

The hissing, steaming locomotive was to him the most wonderful thing of
all. Truly, the mountain people lived as in another world.

"I am glad I left home," said he to himself. "Grandpa would never have
let me know anything. Down here there is a chance to do something and
be somebody."

Soon they were again whirling through a semi-level country on their way
to the South Carolina line. The corn and cotton fields increased in
size, the plantation houses grew larger and began to have stately lawns
and groves of woodland about them. The log houses seemed to be mostly
inhabited by negroes. Ralph finished his skylights, then assisted Mr.
Quigg in getting dinner. The afternoon wore slowly away; then they ate
a cold supper, washed down by some warm coffee. The train moved
haltingly, having to wait at sidings for other trains that had the
right of way. Night came, and Ralph took a blanket and lay down for a
nap, having not yet "caught up with his sleep," as he said to the
artist.

Mr. Quigg lighted a lamp and sat down over a novel. Ralph slumbered on
with his bundle for a pillow.

Once, when he wakened for a moment, he saw as in a dream, the strange
inside of the car with t