CHAPTER XIV.
_A Winter at the Double-Crank_.
There are times when, although the months as they pass seem full, nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the destiny of man.

After a year, those months of petty detail might be wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events--and such a time was the winter that saw "Dill and Bill," as one alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank.

The affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic running than had been employed under Brown's ownership.

Dill settled more and more into the new life, so that he was so longer looked upon as a foreign element; he could discuss practical ranch business and be sure of his ground--and it was then that Billy realized more fully how shrewd a brain lay behind those mild, melancholy blue eyes, and how much a part of the man was that integrity which could not stoop to small meanness or deceit.

It would have been satisfying merely to know that such a man lived, and if Billy had needed any one to point the way to square living he must certainly have been better for the companionship of Dill.
As to Miss Bridger, he stood upon much the same footing with her as he had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity which comes of daily association; to his secret discomfort she had fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy.