Farther and farther the train left the city behind; more and more desolate the country appeared. It was late October; all crops had been harvested, and many trees had shed all their leaves; the only green was that of grass and evergreens, the latter looking almost funereal under the overcast sky. The train entered a region of pine-barrens, through openings in which some sand-dunes could occasionally be seen. At times when the train stopped the wind brought up the sound of the surf, pounding the beach not far away, and the noise was not as cheering as Phil had often thought it in earlier days. Then empty seats in the cars became numerous. All city people who lived out of town had already left the train, and the few who got on afterward belonged in the vicinage. Phil had noted the change as it gradually occurred, and to a well-dressed couple, the last of their kind, who occupied seats not far in front of him, his gaze clung as mournfully as a toper’s eye when fixed upon the last drops that his bottle can give him. Finally they too disappeared, and their place was taken by a sallow country-woman in a home-made brown dress and a gray bonnet trimmed with green ribbons. He tried to console himself with the thought that the car would soon be too dark for colors to be annoying, and that Haynton was but an hour distant. Then the brilliant thought came to him that he might change the scene. He acted upon it, went into the next car, and took a seat. The rustic in front of him turned his head, stared, and drawled,-- “Gret Gosh! Ef it ain’t Phil Hayn, then I’m a clam-shell! Well, I’d never have knowed ye ef twa’n’t for your father’s mouth an’ chin.” Then the rustic deliberately gathered his feet and knees into his seat, and twisted his body until his shoulders were almost squared to the rear of the car, his whole air being that of a man who had suddenly found a job greatly to his liking, and one to which he intended at once to address himself with all his might. “Been down to York, eh?” the rustic continued, after getting his frame satisfactorily braced. “Yes.” The rustic looked so steadily, earnestly, hungrily into the face before him that Phil hastily looked through the window. Some men have been impressed by the historic “stony British stare,” others have admired the penetrating glance of the typical detective, or the frontiersman “sizing up” a new arrival; but the Briton, the detective, and the frontiersman combined could not equal the stare of the countryman whose tastes tend toward the affairs of his neighbors. “York’s a good deal of a town, I s’pose,” the countryman remarked, after some earnest scrutiny. “Yes.” “Find anythin’ to pay the ’xpenses of the trip?” This after another soulful gaze. “Shouldn’t wonder.” “Carpet-bag seems pooty well stuffed,” said the tormentor, after having transferred his glance for a moment to the old satchel that occupied half of Phil’s seat.