stranger. Only his eyes were wistfully melancholy.

"My name is Alexander P. Dill," he informed Billy quite unnecessarily.
"I was going to the Murton place. They told me it was only ten miles
from town and it seems as though I must have taken the wrong road,
somehow. Could you tell me about where it would be from here?"

Charming Billy's cupped hands hid his mouth, but his eyes laughed.
"Roads ain't so plenty around here that you've any call to take one
that don't belong to yuh," he reproved, when his cigarette was going
well. "If Hardup's the place yuh started from, and if they headed yah
right when they turned yuh loose, you've covered about eighteen miles
and bent 'em into a beautiful quarter-circle--and how yuh ever went
and done it undeliberate gets _me_. You are now seven miles from
Hardup and sixteen miles, more or less, from Murton's." He stopped to
watch the effect of his information.

Alexander P. Dill was a long man--an exceedingly long man, as Billy
had already observed--and now he drooped so that he reminded Billy
of shutting up a telescope. His mouth drooped, also, like that of a
disappointed child, and his eyes took to themselves more melancholy.
"I must have taken the wrong road," he repeated ineffectually.

"Yes," Billy agreed gravely, "I guess yuh must of; it does kinda look
that way." There was no reason why he should feel anything more than a
passing amusement at this wandering length of humanity, but Billy
felt an unaccountable stirring of pity and a feeling of indulgent
responsibility for the man.

"Could you--direct me to the right road?"