The birds had not returned when he went away, and now the air was musical with them.

Driving over the prairies seemed fairly certain of being anything but pleasant to-day, with Dill doubled awkwardly in the seat beside him, carrying on an intermittent monologue of trivial stuff to which Billy scarcely listened.

He could feel that there was something at the back of it all, and that was enough for him at present.

He was not even anxious now to hear just what was the form of the disaster which had overtaken them.
"While you were away," Dill began at last in the tone that braces one instinctively for the worst, "I met accidentally a man of whom I had heard, but whom I had not seen.

In the course of our casual conversation he discovered that I was about to launch myself and my capital into the cattle-business, whereupon he himself made me an offer which I felt should not be lightly brushed aside." "They all did!" Billy could not help flinging out half-resentfully, when he remembered that but for his timely interference Dill would have been gulled more than once.
"I admit that in my ignorance some offers advantageous only to those who made them appealed to me strongly.