ch comes of nights sleepless and of looking long upon trouble,
turned and began to pull absently at a splintered place in the
gatepost. He had stopped Dill at the corral to have a talk with him,
because to him the house was as desolate as if a dear one lay dead
inside. Flora was at home--trust his eyes to see her face appear
briefly at the window when he rode up!--but he could not yet quite
endure to face her and her cold greeting.

Dill, looking to Billy longer and lanker and mere melancholy than
ever, caressed his chin meditatively and regarded Billy in his
wistful, half-deprecating way. With the bitter knowledge that his
castle, and with it Dill's fortune, was toppling, Billy could hardly
bear to meet that look. And he had planned such great things, and had
meant to make Dilly a millionaire!

"What would you advise, William, under the present unfavorable
conditions?" asked Dill hesitatingly.

"Oh, I dunno. I've laid awake nights tryin' to pick a winning card. If
it was me, and me alone, I'd pull stakes and hunt another range--and
I'd go gunning after the first damn' man that stuck up a post to hang
barb-wire on. But after me making such a rotten-poor job uh running
the Double-Crank, I don't feel called on to lay down the law to
anybody!"

"If you will permit me to pass judgment, William, I will say that you
have shown an ability for managing men and affairs which I consider
remarkable; _quite_ remarkable. You, perhaps, do not go deep enough in
searching for the cause of our misfortunes. It is not bad management
or the hard winter, or Mr. Brown, even--and I blame myself bitterly
for failing to read aright the 'handwriting on the wall,' to quote
scripture, which I seldom do. If you have ever read history, William,
you must know--even if you have _not_ read history you should know
from observation--how irresistible is the march of progress; how
utterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I should
have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the
West--the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy
who tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpably
careless.

"Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to
me. _He_ saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowed
with the open range he very wisely changed his business; he became
allied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we are
being 'broken' on the whe