So finely tuned was his sympathy that for one fleeting moment he saw a homely, hilly farm in Michigan, with rail fences and a squat old house with wide porch and hard-beaten path from the kitchen door to the well and on to the stables; and down a long slope that was topped with great old trees, Alexander P.
Dill shambling contentedly, driving with a crooked stick three mild-mannered old cows.

"The blamed chump--what did he go and pull out for ?" he asked himself fretfully.

Then aloud: "I'm going to have a heart-to-heart talk with the cook at the hotel, and if he don't give us a real old round-up beefsteak, flopped over on the bare stovelids, there'll be things happen I'd hate to name over.

He can sure do the business, all right; he used to cook for the Double-Crank.

And you," he turned, elaborately cheerful, to Mr.Dill, "you are my guest." "Thank you," smiled Mr.Dill, recovering himself and never guessing how strange was the last sentence to the lips of Charming Billy Boyle.
"I shall be very glad to be the guest of somebody--once more." "Yuh poor old devil, yuh sure drifted a long ways off your home range," mused Billy.