tousled as he
was, and stared abstractedly at Mr. Dill. Perhaps he had never before
felt so utterly disgusted with himself, or realized so keenly his
shortcomings. Not even the girl had humbled him so completely as had
this long, lank, sinfully grammatical man from Michigan.

"You've sure got me where I live, Dilly," he said slowly and
haltingly, feeling mechanically for the makings of a smoke. "Charming
Billy Boyle ain't got a word to say for himself. But if yuh ain't
plumb sick and disgusted with the spectacle I've made uh myself, yuh
can count on me till hell's a skating-rink. I ain't always thisaway. I
do have spells when I'm some lucid."

It was not much, but such as it was it stood for his oath of
allegiance.

Alexander P. Dill sat up straight, his long, bony fingers--which
Billy could still mentally see gripping the necks of those two in
the saloon--lying loosely upon the chair-arms. "I hope you will
not mention the matter again," he said. "I realize that this is not
Michigan, and that the temptations are--But we will not discuss it. I
shall be very grateful for your friendship, and--"

"Grateful!" snorted Billy, spilling tobacco on the strip of faded
ingrain carpet before the bed. "Grateful--hell!"

Mr. Dill looked at him a moment and there was a certain keen
man-measuring behind the wistfulness. But he said no more about the
friendship of Charming Billy Boyle, which was as well.

That is why the two of them later sat apart on the sunny side of the
hotel "office"--which was also a saloon--and talked of many things,
but chiefly of the cattle industry as Montana knows it and of the
hopes and the aims of Alexander P. Dill. Perhaps, also, that is why
Billy breathed clean of whisky and had the bulk of his winter wages
still unspent in his pocket.

"Looks to me," he was saying between puffs, "like you'd uh stayed back
where yuh knew the lay uh the land, instead uh drifting out here where
it's all plumb strange to yuh."

"Well, several incidents influenced my actions," Mr. Dill explained
quietly. "I had always lived within twenty miles of my birthplace.
I owned a general store in a little place near the old farm, and did
well. The farm paid well, also. Then mother died and the place did
not seem quite the same. A railroad was built through the town and the
land I owned there rose enormously in value. I had a splendid location
for a modern store but I could not seem to make up my mind to change.
So I sold out