ing you."

Charming Billy made a rapid mental calculation of his present
financial resources and of past experience in the rate of depletion.

"Well. I may last a week or so, and I might pull out to-morrow," he
decided candidly. "It all depends on the kinda luck I have."

Mr. Dill looked at him inquiringly, but he made no remark that would
betray curiosity. "I have rented a room in a little house in the
quietest part of town. The hotel isn't very clean and there is too
much noise and drinking going on at night. I couldn't sleep there.
I should be glad to have you share my room with me while you stay in
town, if you will. It is clean and quiet."

Charming Billy turned his head and looked at him queerly; at his
sloping shoulders, melancholy face and round, wistful eyes, and
finally at the awkward, hunched-up knees of him. Billy did not mind
night noises and drinking--to be truthful, they were two of the
allurements which had brought him townward--and whether a room were
clean or not troubled him little; he would not see much of it. His
usual procedure while in town would, he suspected, seem very loose to
Alexander P. Dill. It consisted chiefly of spending the nights
where the noise clamored loudest and of sleeping during the
day--sometimes--where was the most convenient spot to lay the length
of him. He smiled whimsically at the contrast between them and their
habits of living.

"Much obliged," he said. "I expect to be some busy, but maybe I'll
drop in and bed down with yuh; once I hit town, it's hard to tell what
I may do."

"I hope you'll feel perfectly free to come at any time and make
yourself at home," Mr. Dill urged lonesomely.

"Sure. There's the old burg--I do plumb enjoy seeing the sun making
gold on a lot uh town windows, like that over there. It sure looks
good, when you've been living by your high lonesome and not seeing any
window shine but your own little six-by-eight. Huh?"

"I--I must admit I like better to see the sunset turn my own windows
to gold," observed Mr. Dill softly. "I haven't any, now; I sold the
old farm when mother died. I was born and raised there. The woods
pasture was west of the house, and every evening when I drove up the
cows, and the sun was setting, the kitchen windows--"

Alexander P. Dill stopped very abruptly, and Billy, stealing a glance
at his face, turned his own quickly away and gazed studiously at a
bald hilltop off to the left. So finely tuned was his sympathy that