y parted at his gate. "You'll not forget to find out in some
way if the Baron is ill, will you?"

"No, my dear, I'll watch him like the Pinkertons' eye that never
sleeps," returned the old man, genially.

"Mrs. Carroll has gone into the dining-room," the servant told them at
the door, and Sydney assumed much cheerfulness as she made her
apologies.

"I've brought Bob, grandmother. He's been all over everywhere with me
this morning. You'll forgive me, Katrina, for leaving you, won't you?
Where's Mr. Wendell?"

"Not back from Asheville yet."

"He went in yesterday," explained Mrs. Carroll to Bob. "I suppose the
train is late. It does seem as if they grow more and more uncertain,
and when there are only two a day each way, it certainly is annoying,
very. You wouldn't know what to make of so meagre an arrangement, would
you, Katrina dear?"

"There's the carriage now," said Bob. "The train couldn't have been
much over an hour behind time; surely you wouldn't complain of that."

"I feel as if I had been journeying for days," said John, sitting down,
"and had seen the sights of far-distant worlds."

"It's the obelisk in Court Square that makes you think that," suggested
Sydney.

"Or the battlements on the library building," added Bob.

"Are there street-cars?" asked Katrina.

"Street-cars? Why, child, there are street-cars to burn--electric ones,
too. I felt grievously defrauded. I wanted a mule tram."

"The mule is an unfashionable animal," said Mrs. Carroll. "Time was
when a handsome pair of mules was considered not unsuitable to draw a
gentleman's carriage."

"The farmers aren't using them so much, either," said Bob. "They're too
unreliable. Horses are cheaper, too."

"I saw some very decent saddle-horses in town--of their kind."

"What's their kind?"

"Long-tailed single-footers, Katrina."

"The easiest gait in the world," put in Bob, combatively, disregarding
the tails.

"It looks so. And not a Derby hat in the whole place except mine."

"And not a silk one, except on colored coachmen," added Sydney,
maliciously.

"Did you drive about?"

"I saw all the sights, dear Mrs. Carroll. I have done to a brown the
Vanderbilt place, the Sunset Drive, and the junction of the Swannanoa
and the French Broad. I flogged a rebellious horse to Gold View, and I
scaled Beaumont and looked down into Chunn's Cove. I gazed at the--you
will excuse me, I hope--faded exterior of a tobacco warehouse----"

"The farmers