Lydia looked at Billy's steady gray eyes, and a faint glow of comfort began to surround her heart. Sometimes she felt as if Billy understood her almost as well as John Levine did.

"Now, look here," he said, argumentatively, "you and I had better talk this clothes question out, once and for all."

Lydia giggled. "Billy, you don't know women! It can't be talked out!"

"I know you," replied the young man, stretching out his long legs to the base-burner, and looking at Lydia, "and I want you to stop worrying about your duds. I want you to let me lend you the money to get a complete party outfit with."

"Billy Norton, you know I wouldn't borrow money from a man!" exclaimed Lydia.

"Well, then, I'll give it to Mother and you borrow it from her."

"Of course, I won't," replied Lydia. "Besides, I've got enough money I earned myself!"

"You have! Then what's all the worry about? How'd you earn it, Lyd? I thought your father—"

Lydia dug the little pocketbook from under the sofa pillow and spread the money proudly on her shawl. "There it is and it's the root of all my troubles."

Billy looked at her suspiciously. "Young woman, how'd you earn that money?" he demanded.

"Socks! Bushels of socks, mostly," answered Lydia with a chuckle that ended in a groan. She looked at Billy whimsically and then as the sureness of his understanding came to her again, she told him the story of her little midnight sweatshop.

"Oh, dearest!" Billy burst forth with a groan when she had finished, "how could you be such a little idiot! Oh, Lydia, Lydia, I can't tell you how you wring my heart."

It seemed for a moment as if he must gather the slight little figure to his heart, but he set his teeth.

"If that darned Prom. means as much as that to you—" he began, but Lydia interrupted him.

"It doesn't any more, Billy. I've learned a lot of things since I've been sick. I was a little idiot to work so hard for clothes! But I don't think it was all clothes. I wanted to be like other girls. I wanted to have the man that took me proud of my appearance."

She paused and Billy would have spoken, but Lydia began again.

"You see, I was never sick before, so I never realized that a sickness is a serious thing in more ways than one. I mean you can't go down to death's door and ever be quite the same afterward. I've been thinking about myself a great deal. Billy, and I'm feeling pretty small. Isn't it queer how hard it is to learn just the simplest things about living! Seems as though I learn everything with my elbows."

The two young people sat in silence, Lydia watching the snowflakes settle on the already overladen boughs of the pine. Billy watching the sensitive lines in Lydia's face change with each passing thought.

"I've made up my mind," Lydia began again, "that I've been poor too long, ever really to outgrow the effects of poverty. I suppose I'd always worry about money, even if I were taken suddenly rich! Anyhow, lots of nice people have liked me poor and I'm just not going to worry about having lovely clothes, with soft colors and—and graceful lines, any more. I'm going to take care of our lovely old mahogany furniture and try to make the cottage an attractive place for people with brains. After all, the real thinkers of the country were poor—Emerson and his circle, how simply they lived! You see, Billy, if I clutter up my mind with furniture and clothes, I won't have time to think."

Lizzie came in at this moment with a bowl of broth. "I'll hold it for you, Lydia," said Billy. "Never mind pulling the little table up, Lizzie, she's too weak to fuss with a table."

There was a remote twinkle in Lizzie's old eyes, but she gave the bowl over to Billy, and tactfully withdrew to the kitchen, where she sat down with her feet in the oven. "Drat Kent!" she said to herself.

Billy moved over to sit on the edge of the couch, and Lydia began to sip the broth, spoonful by spoonful. "It's such fun to be weak and a little helpless and have people waiting on you," she said. "It's the first time it ever happened to me."

As she spoke she was thinking how Billy had improved. How immaculate he was and how well his blue suit fitted him. There was no barnyard odor about him now! Only a whiff of the good cigars he smoked.

"Billy," she said, "what would you say if next year I took the short course in agriculture?"

Billy almost dropped the bowl. "I'd be speechless!" he exclaimed.

"I hate to think of teaching," Lydia went on, "and I'm crazy about the country and farming and so is Dad. And there's more than that to it."

What more there was to it, she did not say then, for Ma Norton came bustling in. She made no comment on Billy's posing as a table! Ma was wise and she was almost as devoted to Lydia as Billy himself.

"It's nice to see the pink coming back in your cheeks, Lydia," she said. "I just ran over to say I was going into town to do some shopping, early in the morning, and if there was anything I could do for you—?"

"No, thank you," said Lydia. "I've begun to save up now to buy a cow!"

And Ma looked on with a puzzled smile as Lydia and Billy burst into sudden shrieks of laughter.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF A GREAT SEARCH

"Abiding love! Those humans who know it, become an essential part of nature's scheme."—The Murmuring Pine.

Lydia returned to her college work the Monday after the Junior Prom, a little thinner, and her color not quite so bright as usual, but in a most cheerful frame of mind. She was feeling, somehow, a new sense of maturity and contentment. Even tales of the wonders of the Prom did not disturb her much. She made up her lost classroom work, then took on an extra course in English Essayists with Professor Willis, just to satisfy her general sense of superiority to the ordinary temptations that should have disturbed a young female with fifteen idle dollars in her pocket!

Kent was devoting a good deal of attention to Lydia but this did not prevent his taking Margery about. He was, he explained to Lydia, so sorry for her!

"You don't have to explain to me," protested Lydia. "I want you to go with all the girls you like. I intend to see all I want of as many men as care to see me. I told you this was my playtime."

Kent's reply to this was a non-committal grunt.

It was late in May that he told Lydia what John Levine had finally accomplished, in his silent months of work in Washington. The morning after he told Lydia, Lake City was ringing with the news. The Indians on the reservation were to be removed bodily to a reservation in the Southwest. The reservation was then to be thrown open to white settlement.

"What will poor Charlie Jackson say?" were Lydia's first words.

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "Poor old scout! He'll have to make a new start in the West. But isn't it glorious news, Lyd! The land reverts to the Government and the Land Office opens it, just as in pioneer days. Everybody who's title's in question now can reenter under settlement laws. Isn't Levine a wizard! Why don't you say something, Lydia?"

"I don't know what to say," said Lydia. "I'm sick at heart for the Indians. But I'm glad that the awful temptation of the pines is going to be taken away from Lake City. Though how good can come out of a wrong, I'm not sure. I don't understand Mr. Levine. Oh, dear! It's all wrong. When do the Indians go?"

"The last of June. It's funny, Lydia, that you don't have more sympathy with my work," replied Kent, gloomily.

"Oh, Kent!" cried Lydia, "I want to believe that everything you do is right but something's the matter with my mind, I seem to have to decide matters of right and wrong for myself. When will Mr. Levine come home?"

"Next month. Well, there's one consolation. You've always been crazy about Levine and you don't approve of him, either."

Lydia flushed. "Oh, I don't say that I don't approve of him. I just don't understand him. Maybe he really believes the end justifies the means."

"Huh! Isn't that just what I believe?" demanded Kent. He looked at her so happily, his boyish eyes so appealing, his square chin so belligerent, that Lydia suddenly laughed and gave his ear a tweak.

"Poor old vanity! Did he want all the ladies to adore him? Well, they do, so cheer up!"

Kent grinned. "Lyd, you're a goose and a good old pal! Hang it, I'm glad you've got brain enough to stick to your own opinions!"

On a Sunday afternoon, late in June, John Levine turned in at the gate as casually as though he had left but the day before. Lydia was inspecting the garden with her father, when she heard Adam bark and whine a welcome to some one.

"Oh, there he is, Daddy!" she cried, and she dashed down the rows of young peas, her white skirts fluttering, both hands extended.

John seized her hands and for a moment the two stood smiling and looking into each other's face. Except that he was grayer, Levine was unchanged. He broke the silence to say, "Well! Well! young Lydia, you are grown up. I don't see how you manage to look so grown up, when your face remains unchanged."

"It's my hair," said Lydia, "and my skirts."

"Of course," growled Amos, "I realize that I count only as Lydia's father. Still I think you ought to recognize me, anyhow."

The two men clasped hands. "Well, Amos?"

"It's been a long time between drinks, John."

"I know it, Amos, but my chore's done. Now, I'll stay home and enjoy life. Lydia, is it too hot for waffles and coffee, for supper? Lord, I've dreamed of those old days and of this meeting for nine months."

"It's not too hot for anything on earth you can ask for," returned Lydia, beginning to roll up her sleeves. "I'll go right in and start them now."

John looked after her, at the lengthened skirts, at the gold braids wrapped round her head. "She doesn't change except in size, thank God," he said.

"Oh, she gets prettier," said Amos, carelessly. "She's sort of grown up to her mouth, and the way she wears her hair shows the fine set of her head. She's improved a lot."

"She has not! Amos, you never did appreciate her. She couldn't be any more charming now than she was as a kiddie."

Amos put an affectionate hand on his friend's shoulder. "You always were an old fool, John. Come up and peel your coat, then take a look at the garden. There's Lizzie, dying to speak to you."

Levine looked around the living-room, complacently. "Jove, isn't it fine! Most homelike place in America. Lydia's been fixing up the old mahogany, eh?"

"Yes! One of the professors told her it was O. K., so she got a book out of the library on old furniture and now we are contented and strictly up to date. These damned rugs though, I can't get her to tack 'em down. They're just like so many rags on the floor! I never had a chance to tell you what she did to my mahogany arm chair, did I?"

He retailed the story of Willis' first call and John roared though he murmured, "Poor kiddie," as he did so.

"She's given me over to my sins, though, lately," Amos went on, with the faint twinkle in his eyes that Lydia had inherited. "She brought me up by hand, for a long time, hid my pipes, wanted me to manicure my nails, wouldn't let me eat in my shirt sleeves or drink my coffee out of the saucer. But her friend, Willis, likes me, as is,—so she's let me backslide without a murmur."

Amos paused and looked out at the shimmering lake. "John, I wish I had five daughters. There's nothing like 'em in the world."

Levine did not answer for a moment, while his gaze followed Amos' out over the familiar outline of blue water and far green hills.

"Sometimes, Amos," he muttered, finally, "I feel as if my whole life had been wasted."

It was an extraordinarily pleasant supper. John and Amos, in their shirt sleeves, ate waffles till Lydia declared that both the batter and her strength were exhausted. Indians were not mentioned. Levine was in a reminiscent mood and told stories of his boyhood on a Northern Vermont farm and old Lizzie for the first time in Lydia's remembrance told of some of the beaux she had had when her father was the richest farmer round Lake City.

After the dishes were washed, Levine asked Lydia to stroll up the road with him while Amos did his evening chores. It was dusk when they turned out the gate to the road, Lydia clinging to John's arm. A June dusk, with the fresh smell of the lake mingling with the heavy scent of syringa and alder bloom, and of all the world of leafage at the high tide of freshness. June dusk, with the steady croak of frogs from the meadows and the faint call of whippoorwills from the woods.

John put a long, hard hand over the small thin one on his arm. "Have you missed me, young Lydia?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, "especially as you never came near us after the hearing."

"How could I come?" asked the man, simply. "You had weighed me and found me wanting. There was nothing for me to do but to go ahead and finish my job, as I still saw the right of it. Have you forgiven me, Lydia?"

"It wasn't a matter between you and me," replied the girl, slowly. "It was between you and your conscience and if your conscience approves, what's the use of asking me to forgive you?"

"Because, I can't stand not having your approval," said Levine.

They strolled on in silence, while Lydia considered her reply. "No matter if the destroying of the Indians were right, that wouldn't exonerate the whites for having been cruel and crooked in doing it. People will always remember it of us."

Levine gave a laugh that had no mirth in it. "Lord, who'll say the New England spirit is dead! You're as cold in judging me as one of your ancestors was when he sentenced a witch to be burned."

"Oh, no!" cried Lydia. "Dear John Levine, I couldn't be cold to you. Nothing could make me love you less. And you yourself told me to be true to myself."

John sighed, then said abruptly, "Let's never discuss it again. What are you reading now, Lydia?"

"English essayists and Emerson. I'm crazy about Emerson. He seems so much more human than Leigh Hunt and De Quincey and the rest of them. Maybe it's because he's an American, so I understand him better. I think I like Compensation and Friendship the best so far. I learned one thing from Friendship to quote to you. It's like you and me."

With both hands clasping his arm, her sweet face upturned to his in the dusk, and with the rich notes in her voice that were reminiscent of little Patience, she quoted:

"'Friendship—that select and sacred relationship that is a kind of absolute and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common so much is this purer; and nothing is so much divine.'"

John stopped and taking Lydia's face in both his hands, he exclaimed huskily. "Oh, my dear, this is my real welcome home! Oh, Lydia, Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

Lydia laughed. "Then we'd travel—to all the happy places of the world. We must turn back. Daddy'll be waiting."

Levine turned obediently, saying as he did so, "Just one thing more, then the year's absence will be spanned. How does the Great Search go on? Do you ever have bad dreams at night, now?"

"Sometimes," replied Lydia. "Just the other night I woke up with the old fear and then—it was very curious—I heard the lap-lapping of the lake, and the little murmur of the wind in the pine and the frogs cheeping and the steady chirp of the crickets, and, Mr. Levine, the queerest sense of comfort came to me. I can't put it into words. Somehow it was as if Something behind all those little voices spoke to me and told me things were—were right."

"Lydia," said Levine, quickly, "you've struck the right trail. I'll follow it with you. What a long way you've come alone, little girl. Give me your hand, dear. I like to feel it on my arm. Oh, Lydia! Lydia!"

"What are you two mooning about," said Amos' voice, as he loomed on them through the dusk.

"Enterprises of great pith and moment," replied Levine. "Got any tobacco with you, Amos?"

"No! We'd better go in the house, anyhow. The mosquitoes will eat us up. Lydia, Margery's looking for you."

And as far as Lydia was concerned, the evening was ended.

Levine was very busy with the details of the Indian removal for the next week or two. The exodus was accomplished in a business-like manner. A steady line of busses brought the Indians from the reservation to the outskirts of Lake City, where rough barracks had been erected to care for the government wards while they were being concentrated. The state militia was on guard here, at intervals along the road and upon the reservation. There were some disturbances on the reservation, but for the most part, the Indians were dazed and unprotesting. Before the concentration began, the precaution was taken of sending Charlie Jackson under guard to the new reservation in the Southwest. Lydia had never seen him after her day at the hearing. She always was to carry in her memory, his handsome bronze face, too early marked with lines of despair, as she saw it while she uttered her protest to the commissioners. And it was a hauntingly sad memory to carry.

She went with Billy to see the embarking of the Indians in the special trains provided for them. The streets along the line of march were lined with whites, silent but triumphant. It was a beautiful day, clear and hot. Two by two, the Indians moved along the fine old elm-shadowed streets, old Wolf at the head, shambling and decrepit, but with his splendid old head held high. Two by two, in utter silence, their moccasined feet soundless, old Indians in buckskins, and young Indians in store clothes, then squaws, in calico "mother-hubbards," great bundles strapped to their backs, and children in their arms or clinging to their skirts. A long, slow moving line, in a silence that even the children did not break.

It took until well in the evening to get the pathetic exiles into the trains. Lydia did not stay after dark. Profoundly depressed, she made Billy take her home.

In the evening she sat with her Emerson open before her, but with her unseeing eyes fastened on the open door. It was a little after nine when the chug-chug of Kent's car stopped at the gate and in a moment Kent, white faced, appeared in the door.

"John Levine's been shot. He wants Lydia!"

Without a sound Lydia started after Kent down the path, Amos following. Kent packed them into the little car and started back toward town at breakneck speed.

"How bad off is he?" asked Amos.

"Can't live," answered Kent.

Still Lydia made no sound though Amos held her firmly in the vain attempt to still her trembling.

"How'd it happen?" Amos' voice broke a little.

"That damned sister of Charlie Jackson and old Susie both took a shot at him, just as the last car-load was finished. The police and the militia got 'em right off. Shot 'em all to pieces. It looked as though there'd be a wholesale fight for a minute but the militia closed in and the last train got off."

"Where is John?" asked Amos.

"In Doc Fulton's office. They can't move him."

No one spoke again. Kent brought the automobile up with a bang before the doctor's house and Lydia, followed closely by the two men, ran up to the door, through the outer office to the inner, where a nurse and Doc Fulton stood beside a cot.

Levine lay with his face turned toward the door. When he saw Lydia he smiled faintly. She was quite calm, except for her trembling. She walked quickly to his side and took his hand.

"Looks like I was going to start traveling alone, young Lydia," he said feebly. "I just wanted to tell you—that Great Search—is ending all right—don't worry—"

"I won't," said Lydia.

"Only I hate to go alone—my mother—gimme something, Doc."

The doctor held a glass to his lips. After a moment, Levine said again, "My mother used to hold me—" his voice trailed off and Lydia said suddenly, "You mean you want me to comfort you like I used to comfort little Patience?"

"Yes! Yes!" whispered Levine. "It's going to sleep alone I—— Mother—"

Lydia knelt and sliding her arm under Levine's neck, she pulled his head over gently to rest on her shoulder. Then she began with infinite softness the little songs she had not uttered for so many years.

"'Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet; Make it from simple flowers Plucked from the lowly valleys After the summer showers.'"

"'Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea . . .'"

"'I've reached the land of corn and wine And all its riches surely mine. I've reached that heavenly, shining shore My heaven, my home, for evermore.'"

Suddenly the nurse shifted John's head and Doc Fulton lifted Lydia to her feet. "Take her home, Amos," he said.

John Levine had finished the Great Search.

Curiously enough, nothing could have done so much toward reinstating Lake City in the good opinion of the country at large as did Levine's tragic death. There was felt to be a divine justice in the manner of his taking off that partook largely of the nature of atonement. He had led the whites in the despoiling of the Indians. For this the Indians had killed him.

That a white life extinguished for a tribe destroyed might not be full compensation in the eyes of that Larger Justice which, after all, rules the Universe, did not seriously influence the reaction of public opinion toward thinking better of Lake City. And John Levine, known in life as an Indian Graft politician, became in his death a Statesman of far vision.

Levine's will was not found at first. Distant cousins in Vermont would be his heirs, if indeed after his estate was settled, it was found that there was left anything to inherit.

Kent for a month or so after the tragedy was extremely busy helping to disentangle Levine's complicated real estate holdings. It was found that he held heavily mortgaged second growth timber lands in the northern part of the State and Kent spent a month superintending a re-survey of them. He was very much broken up by Levine's death, and welcomed the heavy work.

In spite of Lydia's deep affection for Levine, she did not feel his death as much as Amos did. For after all, Lydia was young, gloriously young, and with a forward-turned face. Amos had lost in John his only real friend, the only human being who in some ways had helped to fill in the hopeless gap left by his wife's death. And Amos, though still a young man, kept his face turned backward.

After her first wild grief had expended itself, Lydia found that, after all, Levine's tragic death had not surprised her. She realized that ever since she had known Charlie Jackson, she had been vaguely haunted by a fear of just such an ending.

July slipped into a breathless, dusty August. Lydia worked very hard, making herself tasks when necessary work was done. She put up fruit. She worked in the garden. She took up the dining-room carpet and oiled the floor and made rugs. After she had had her swim in the late afternoon, she would take up her old position on the front doorstep, to sew or read or to dream with her eyes on the pine.

How silently, how broodingly it had stood there, month in, month out, year after year! What did it feel, Lydia wondered, now that the Indians were gone? Was it glad that Levine had been punished?

Billy, trundling up the dusty road from the law office on his bicycle, late each afternoon, would stop for a moment or two. Since the tragedy, not a day had gone by that Lydia had not seen him.

"The drought is something frightful," he said to Lydia one afternoon in late August, wiping the sweat and dust from his face. "This is the ninth week without rain. The corn is ruined. I never knew anything like this and Dad says he hasn't either."

"Our garden died weeks ago," said Lydia, listlessly.

Billy looked at her keenly. "Are you feeling any more cheerful, Lyd?"

Lydia turned her gaze from the burning brown meadows to Billy's tanned, rugged face.

"I shall always have a gap in my life, where he went out," she said, slowly. "I shall never get over missing him. Oh, he was so dear to me! And yet, Billy, it isn't at all like little Patience's death. He didn't depend on me and I didn't live with him so that everything doesn't cry his absence to me. And I've got more resources than I had then—"

She laid her hand on the open book in her lap.

"What're you reading?" asked Billy.

"Emerson—Compensation. Listen, Billy—'We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.'

"And so," Lydia's voice trembled, but she went on bravely, "I'm trying to understand—trying to see how I can make something good come out of his poor lost life. Somehow I feel as if that were my job. And—and the idea helps me. Oh, my dear John Levine!"

Billy cleared his throat. "Let's see that passage, Lyd." He took the book and read on: "'The death of a dear friend—wife, lover, brother—terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth that was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation or style of living and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.'"

The two young people sat staring at the distant hills.

"Don't you see," Lydia burst out, "that I've got to do something, be something, to make all the loss and trouble of my life worth while?"

"I understand," answered Billy. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not quite sure, yet," replied Lydia, "but I'll tell you as soon as I've made up my mind. Billy, ask your father to come over this evening. Dad is so desperately blue."

Billy rose to go. "One thing I will tell you, Billy," Lydia went on, "I'm going to take the short dairy course this winter, besides my other work."

Billy looked at the sweet, resolute face curiously, then he chuckled.

"Whenever you deign to unravel the workings of the mystery you call your mind, I'll be crazy to listen," he said.

Early in September, John Levine's will was found. He had left his entire property, unconditionally, to Lydia.

Amos, at first, was frantic with delight. Lydia was appalled.

"All my life," she half sobbed to her father, "I've been fighting to get away from Indian lands. And Mr. Levine knew how I felt. Oh, how could he do this to me!"

"Don't talk like a fool, Lydia!" roared Amos.

Lydia turned to Kent, who was sitting on the back steps with them. He leaned over and patted her hand.

"Why worry about it, Lyd? Your father and I'll look out for it all."

"Do I have to keep it?" asked Lydia, tensely. "Will the law make me?"

"I should say not! You can give it to me, if you want to," laughed Kent.

"But don't you see how I feel?" cried Lydia. "Don't you see that all John Levine's lands up there are haunted by death—his own—and all the starving Indians? Oh, why did he do this to me!"

"I suppose you feel the same way about the cottage," said Amos, sarcastically.

"I don't either," contradicted Lydia. "I'm as happy as I can be that we've got that. But all the rest! I won't have it, I tell you! I'd rather be poverty stricken all my life."

"Well, don't worry too much about that," said Kent. "Dave Marshall thinks there won't be anything left after the estate is settled, but the Indian lands."

"Oh, Kent, you aren't having anything to do with Dave Marshall, are you?" exclaimed Lydia.

Kent flushed a little. "Well, his advice can't hurt me. If it's bad, I don't have to take it. You ought to go out and see his farm, Lydia. They're getting the house all fitted with modern conveniences. Dave's going to make a model stock farm."

"Bought with money earned by the Last Chance!" said Lydia.

"You can't be so darned squeamish about where a man gets his money these days, Lyd. Of course, there was no excuse for the Last Chance. But Dave's done what he could about it."

Lydia made no reply and Kent looked at her quizzically. "A New England conscience must be something awful to own, eh, Lyd?"

Lydia chuckled. "It's pretty bad," she admitted, then she went on soberly, "but I won't take those Indian lands."

"You can give them to me," reiterated Kent, cheerfully.

"She'll keep them," said Amos, shortly, "or Lydia and I'll have our first real row."

"Well, save up the fight till the estate's settled," said Kent, soothingly. "And then you'll know what you're fighting about. That will take some months."

Lydia sighed with relief. And again Kent laughed. "Oh, Lyd! You haven't any idea how funny you are! Come to, old lady! This is the twentieth century! And twentieth century business ethics don't belong to town meeting days. The best fellow gets the boodle!"

"Then Dave Marshall is the best fellow in our community, I suppose," said Lydia.

"Oh, Gee, Lyd! After all, he's Margery's father!"

Lydia looked at Kent thoughtfully. Since the day under the willows, he had not made love to her, yet she had the feeling that Kent was devoted to her and she wondered sometimes why he liked to spend as much time with Margery as with herself. Then she gave herself a mental shake.

"I'm going to tell you right now, that until I have to I'm not going to worry. I'm going to try to be happy in my senior year."



CHAPTER XIX

CAP AND GOWN

"Nature never pretends. She gives her secrets only to the unpretending."—The Murmuring Pine.

The fifteen dollars, after all, were disposed of in a highly satisfactory manner. They paid for Lydia's senior cap and gown. Perhaps there were other members of the class to whom their senior insignia meant as much as they did to Lydia, but that is to be doubted.

Although, ever since her illness, she had firmly resolved never to worry again over her meager wardrobe, she almost wept with joy when she first beheld herself in cap and gown. For she looked exactly like other girls! It didn't matter at all, this year, whether or not she had a new suit or a new overcoat. The gown was all-concealing. Donning it was like turning from caterpillar to butterfly with a single wave of the hand.

Amos and Lizzie were as much impressed as Lydia, but for different reasons. Lizzie was sure that the gown was proof and evidence that Lydia had compassed all human knowledge.

"Land, Lydia," she murmured, walking slowly around the slender figure, "it makes you look terrible dignified and I'm glad of that. No one could look at you now and not feel that you know an awful lot."

Amos was unimpressed by Lydia's stores of wisdom but it seemed to him that there never was such a lovely face as that which looked out at him from under the mortar-board cap. There was a depth to the clear blue eyes, a sweetness to the red lips, that moved him so that for a moment he could not speak.

"It's an awful pretty idea, wearing the cap and gown, isn't it!" he said, finally. "Somewhere, back East, there's a picture of one of your ancestors who taught in an English college. You look something like him."

"Did I have that kind of an ancestor?" asked Lydia with interest. "Isn't it too bad that we Americans don't know anything about our forebears. I wonder what the old duck would say if he could see me!"

It was the rainiest Fall within Lydia's recollection. It seemed, after the drought was once broken, as if nature would never leave off trying to compensate for the burning summer. The dark weather had a very depressing effect on Amos and instead of growing more resigned to his friend's death, he seemed to Lydia to become daily more morose and irritable.

In a way, Lydia's conscience smote her. She knew that her father was worrying over her attitude on her inheritance, but she continued to avoid the issue with him while the estate was being settled. Lydia was doing heavy work in college. She actually had entered all the classes in dairying possible, while carrying her other college work. And she enjoyed the new work amazingly.

She had not mentioned her purpose to any one of her friends but Billy. Therefore when Professor Willis, showing some Eastern visitors through the dairy building, came upon her washing cream bottles one afternoon, he was rendered entirely speechless for a moment.

Lydia, in a huge white dairy apron and cap, was sluicing the bottles happily, the only girl in a class of a dozen men, when Willis came in, followed by two tall men in eyeglasses.

"Queer, I admit, to find this sort of thing in a college," he was saying, "but decidedly interesting, nevertheless. Well, Miss Dudley, are you—I didn't know—I beg your pardon."

The class, which was working without an instructor, looked up in astonishment. Lydia blushed furiously and the two visitors looked on with obvious interest.

"It's a class in bottle sterilizing," she explained. "It just happens to be my turn."

The look of relief on Willis' face made Lydia angry. She turned her back on him and proceeded to let a cloud of steam envelop her and her bottles.

"The idiot! He thought I was dish-washing for a living, I suppose," she murmured to herself. "What business is it of his, anyhow?"

How Willis got rid of his two guests, he did not say, but half an hour later, when Lydia emerged from the dairy building, he was waiting for her. There was a quiet drizzle of rain, as was usual this Fall, and Lydia was wearing her old coat, with her mortar-board. But it was clear that the professor of Shakespeare did not know what she wore. It was a half mile through the University farm to the street-car and he wanted to re-establish himself with Lydia before some other swain appeared.

"Tell me what this means, Miss Dudley!" he said eagerly as he raised his umbrella to hold it carefully over the mortar-board.

"It looks as though it meant rain, to me," replied Lydia, shortly.

Willis gave a little gasp. "Oh! I beg your pardon!"

His chagrin made Lydia ashamed of herself. "I don't see why you should be so shocked at my trying to learn something useful," she said.

"Oh, but I'm not! Nothing that you could do would shock me! You've got a good reason, for you're the most sensible girl I ever met. And that's what I'm keen about, the reason."

"The reason?" Lydia stared at the dripping woodland through which they were making their way. "I'm not just sure I had a reason. I don't want to teach. I do love farming. I don't see why a woman can't learn dairy work as well as a man."

"You're the only girl doing it, aren't you?"

"Yes, but what difference does that make? The boys are fine to me."

"I don't know that that surprises me any," Willis smiled down at the pink profile at his shoulder. "Well, and then what?"

"Then a dairy farm, if Dad and I can rent the makings of one."

"But you have plenty of land, haven't you? Levine left all his property to you, I understand."

Lydia looked quickly up into Willis' face. "If you were I would you keep that property?"

The professor's eyes widened. "I? Oh! I don't know. It would be an awful temptation, I'm afraid."

"I'd rather be poor all my life," said Lydia. "I'm not afraid of poverty. I've lived with it always and I know it's a sheep in wolf's clothing."

"You mean you've got the courage to give the pine land up?" asked Willis, quickly.

"It isn't courage. It's being afraid of my conscience. I—I feel as if I were finishing out John Levine's life for him—doing what he ought to have done."

"I wonder if you have any idea what you mean to me!" Willis suddenly burst forth. "You embody for me all the things my puritan grandmothers stood for. By Jove, if the New England men have failed, perhaps the Western women will renew their spirit."

Lydia flushed. "I—I wish you wouldn't talk that way," she protested. "I'm not really wise nor very good. I just feel my way along—and there's no one to advise me."

"That's the penalty of growing up, my dear," said Willis. "We no longer have any one to tell us what to do. Here comes your car. I'm afraid I let the umbrella drip on your cap."

"It doesn't matter," said Lydia, valiantly.

"Miss Dudley—" as he signaled the car, "I'm coming to see you, just as often as you'll let me, this winter," and he walked off before Lydia could reply. She sank into a car seat, her cheeks burning, her heart thudding.

Early in December, the settlement of the Levine estate was completed. John's method of "shoestringing" his property was disastrous as far as the size of Lydia's heritage went. Her father tried to make her understand the statement of the Second National Bank, which was acting as executor. And as nearly as Lydia could understand, one portion of the estate was used to pay up the indebtedness of another portion, until all that was left was the cottage, with a mortgage on it, and three hundred and twenty acres of land on the reservation.

The three hundred and twenty acres on the reservation was under a cloud. Part of it was land he had gotten from Charlie's sister. All of it he had obtained from alleged full bloods.

"Then," said Lydia, in a relieved manner, "I really haven't any Indian lands at all!"

"Oh, yes, you have," replied Amos. "The court will take the oath of a number of people that the land was obtained from mixed bloods. Dave Marshall has fixed that up."

"Dave Marshall!" gasped Lydia.

Amos nodded. "He's strong with the Whiskey Trust. And the Whiskey Trust is extra strong wherever there's a reservation."

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Lydia, "we can't take it? Don't you see we can't?"

It was just after supper and they were in the familiar old living-room. Adam was snoring with his head under the base burner, and Lizzie was clattering the dishes in the kitchen. Amos stood by the table, filling his pipe, and Lydia with her pile of text books had prepared for her evening of study. Amos' work-blunted fingers trembled as he tamped the tobacco into the bowl and Lydia knew that the long dreaded battle was on.

"I can't understand why you act so like a fool," began Amos, querulously. "And I can't see why you set your judgment up as better than mine. I swan—even your Mother never did that, except on borrowing money."

"It isn't judgment. It's conviction, Daddy. And John Levine told me to stand by my own convictions, even when they were against his. Oh, how can you be willing to take land stolen in the first place and then the theft legalized by the Whiskey Trust! Why, you don't want me even to speak to Dave Marshall now, yet you're willing to take this dirty favor from him."

"We won't keep the land. We'll sell it and have the money to clear up the mortgage on the cottage. I'd take a favor from the devil in hell to get this place clear," replied Amos slowly. He took a turn up and down the room. "I can't see what's happened to children nowadays. In my day we obeyed. Lydia, I'm not going to discuss this any longer. You've got to take that land."

Lydia sat with her thin hands clasped before her on the table, her clear eyes fastened on her father's face.

"I'm not a child, Daddy," she said in a low voice, "I'm a woman, grown. And if you'd wanted me to grow up without any convictions, you should have given me different ancestors and then you shouldn't have brought me up in a town like Lake City."

Amos looked down at his daughter grimly. The Daniel Webster picture in its black carved frame was just behind him and the somber vision in the living and the pictured eyes was identical.

"Can't you see what a fool you are!" he shouted. "The land can never go back to the Indians. John took good care of that. If you don't take it, somebody else will. Can't you see!"

Lydia's lips tightened. "That's not the point. It's the way we're getting it and the way John Levine got it."

"And yet you pretended that you loved and admired Levine!" sneered Amos.

Lydia sprang to her feet. She was white to her lips. "Don't repeat that remark," she said in a choked voice. "What do you know about the feeling John Levine and I had for each other? He was the one friend of my life."

"Nice way you have of showing it, now he's gone," roared Amos. "Just about the way you show your affection for me. Will nothing satisfy you? Norton and I never squealed when you and Billy got our claims taken away from us. Doesn't it occur to you it's about time you sacrificed something to me!"

Lydia had never seen her father so angry before. He had often worked himself into a tantrum on the subject of money but there was an aspect to his anger now that was new to her. She was trembling but cool.

"I'll do anything you want but this, Dad," she said.

"But this is all I want. It's what I've wanted for years, this little bit of land. And you haven't any idea what that feeling is."

Like a flash Lydia saw again long aisles of pines, smelled again the odor of the needles, heard again the murmuring call of the wind.

"Good God!" cried Amos, tossing his pipe on the table, "poverty's hounded me all my life—poverty and death. The only two people who cared about me, Patience and Levine're gone. Yet here's the chance for me to be independent. Here's a chance for me to make up for the failure I've made of life. A man with a little piece of property like this and a little bank account is somebody in the community. What do I care how I get it, as long's I can hold it? What's a lot of dirty Indians to stand between me and my future? But what do you care?"

"O Daddy! O Daddy! How can you talk so to me!" groaned Lydia. She put her hands over her eyes for a moment, swallowed a sob and then started for the outer door. She caught her coat from the nail and closed the door behind her.

An irresistible impulse had carried her from the house. She wanted to see Billy. It was still early and a lantern flickered in the Norton barnyard. She ran along the snowy road and down the drive of the Norton yard, pausing beside a lilac bush to see whether it was Billy or his father just entering the cowshed. It was Billy and she ran across the barnyard to the shed door. Billy was whistling to himself as he began to bed down the cattle for the night. Lydia looked at him eagerly in the dim light. How big and strong he was!

"Billy!" she said, softly.

The young man dropped his pitchfork and came toward her. "What's the matter, Lydia!" he exclaimed.

"Dad and I've been having an awful quarrel."

"About the land?" asked Billy quickly.

Lydia nodded. "Oh, I don't know what to do!" And then, not having meant to do so at all, she suddenly began to cry.

"Why can't they let you alone, damn 'em!" exclaimed Billy, furiously. "Come away from that cold doorway, dear." And he led her into the warm stable and over to a harness box. "There," pulling her down beside him on the box, and putting his arm about her, "don't cry, Lydia. I can't stand it. I'm liable to go over and say things to your father and Kent."

There was an edge to his voice as he said this that vaguely alarmed Lydia. She wiped her eyes.

"Kent wasn't there," she said.

"No, but he's behind your father in this. I'll tell 'em both, sometime, what I think of their bullying you this way."

"Kent hasn't bullied me," insisted Lydia.

"No? Well, give him time! Poor little girl! Don't tremble so. You don't have to talk any more about it to any one. Just send 'em to me."

Lydia smiled through her tears. "I can't send my own father to you. And you and Kent would come to blows."

"We probably would," replied Billy. "Want my hanky or haven't you wept yours full yet?"

"I'm not going to cry any more," said Lydia, raising her head. Billy still held her warmly in the circle of his arm. The stable was dim and quiet and fragrant with clover. "You're such a comfort, Billy. Now that John Levine's gone, there's no one understands me as you do. How can I reconcile Dad to giving up the land?"

"You can't, Lydia. You'll just have to reconcile yourself to a misunderstanding with him."

"But I can't live that way!" wailed Lydia.

"Well, you have the cottage. He used to think he'd be perfectly happy if he owned that."

"Oh, there's a mortgage on the cottage!" exclaimed Lydia. "Poor Daddy! He wants to pay the mortgage with the lands."

"It's tough luck! But there's nothing for you to do, Lydia, but to stick to it. Don't weaken and things will come out all right. See if they don't. And you've always got me. And if I see they're worrying you too much, I'll make trouble for 'em."

A vague, warm sense of comfort and protection was stilling Lydia's trembling. She rose and looked up into his face gratefully. "I don't see why you're so good to me," she said.

"Do you want me to tell you?" began the young man eagerly.

"No! No!" Lydia began to move hastily toward the door. "Don't come home with me, Billy. I'll just run back alone."

Billy's face in the lantern light was inscrutable. "I'll obey to-night, Lydia," he said, "but the time's coming, when I won't," and he picked up the pitchfork he had dropped.

With the sense of comfort and protection sustaining her, Lydia went homeward under the winter stars. Kent's automobile was standing before the gate and Lydia's heart sank. It was the first time in her life she ever had been sorry at the thought of seeing Kent.

He was sitting before the base burner with her father and jumped up to help her take her coat off. He greeted her soberly.

"Your father's been telling me about your discussion, Lyd," he said. "You can't mean to stick by your decision!"

Lydia sat down wearily. "Oh, Kent, don't you begin at me, too."

"But I think I ought to, Lydia," replied Kent, his voice dangerously eager. "I don't think any of your friends have a right to be quiet when you're letting a silly scruple ruin your and your father's future."

"It certainly won't ruin my future," said Lydia. "And I won't let it ruin Dad's."

"Now look here, Lydia," began Kent, "let's begin at the beginning and sift this thing out."

"But why?" groaned Lydia. "You know exactly how I feel and why I feel it. And I know how you feel. We've been debating it for years."

"Yes, but listen," persisted Kent, and once more he began his arguments on the Indian question.

Kent had a certain eloquence of speech, yet Lydia, knowing all that he would say, gave little heed to his words while she watched his glowing face.

"Don't you see?" he ended finally.

"I see how you feel, yes," replied Lydia. "But just because you can list what you call average American business deals that are crooked, you aren't justified in being crooked, are you?"

Kent threw out his hand helplessly, and for a moment there was stance in the room, then he said,

"Well, after all, there's nothing so selfish as your Puritans. Of course, every one but yourselves is wrong. And, of course, it doesn't occur to you that it might be a decent thing of you to sacrifice your own scruples to do a thing that would mean so much to your father."

Lydia looked at Kent quickly. This was a new angle. He would have followed this opening at once had not Amos spoken for the first time.

"Hold up, Kent," he said in a tired voice. "Don't heckle her any more. After all, I'm getting on toward fifty and I guess it's too late for me to begin over, anyhow. I'll plod along as I always have."

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Lydia, "don't talk that way! You aren't a bit old. You make me feel like a beast, between you."

"Well, we don't mean to," Amos went on, "but I guess we have been pretty hard on you."

Amos' weariness and gentleness moved Lydia as no threats could. Her eyes filled with tears and she crossed over quickly to the window and looked out on the starlit splendor of the lake. In how many, many crises of her life she had gazed on this self-same scene and found decision and comfort there!

Was she selfish? Was she putting her own desire for an easy conscience ahead of her father's happiness? Amos went into the kitchen for a drink and Kent followed her to the window and took both her hands.

"Lydia," he said, "I'm awful sorry to press you so, but you're being unfair and foolish, honestly you are. You used to let me look out for you in the old days—the old days when I used to pull little Patience's carriage with my bicycle—why can't you trust me now? Come, dearest,—and next year we'll be married and live happy ever after."

Lydia's lips quivered. All Kent's charm of manhood, all the memories of their childhood together, of his boyhood love for her and her baby sister, spoke together to win her to his desires. And after all, what could matter so much to her as her father's and Kent's happiness?

"Kent!" she cried with the breathlessness of a new idea, "if I should give in and agree to take the land, would you go up there with me and turn it into a farm?"

Kent smiled at her pityingly. "Why, Lyd, there's nothing in that! Why should we try to farm it? The money is in speculating with it. I could clear up a mint of money for you in a couple of years, if you'll give me the handling of it."

But Lydia's eyes were shining now. "Oh, but listen! You don't understand. Mr. Levine drove the Indians out, by fraud and murder. Yes, he did, Kent. And yet, he had big dreams about it. He must have had. He was that kind of a man. And if we should go up there and turn those acres into a great farm, and—and make it stand for something big and right—perhaps that would make up for everything!"

"Lord, what a dreamer you are, Lyd," groaned Kent. "Mr. Dudley, do you hear this?"

Amos grunted. "Nothing looks good to me but this cottage. I'd have a cow and a few pigs and some bees and the whole world could go to the devil for all of me."

"Lydia," said Kent, "be sensible. Don't talk impossibilities."

"What is there impossible about it?" demanded Lydia.

"Gee, easy money on one side, and a lifetime of hard work on the other! Yet you act as if there was a choice."

"Kent, can't you understand how I feel?" pleaded Lydia. "Have you got a blind spot in your mind where money is concerned? Are all the men in America money crazy like the men in Lake City?"

"Sure," replied Kent cheerfully. "Oh, Lydia, honey, don't be so hard! Look at your poor old Dad! Think what it would mean to him. Don't be so doggone sanctimonious!"

Instead of looking at her father, Lydia looked at Kent, long and wistfully. How dear he was to her! What an inalienable part of her life he was! What was the use of always struggling against her heart. Kent smiled into her face. Her lips trembled and she turned to look at Amos. He was standing by the table, filling his pipe. Suddenly Lydia realized how gray and broken he looked, how bent his shoulders were with work, and there swept over her anew an understanding of his utter loneliness since her mother's and Levine's death.

With a little inarticulate murmur, she ran across the room and threw her arms about his neck. "Oh, Daddy," she cried, "I'll do it! I'll agree to it! If only you'll promise me to be happy!"

Amos dropped his pipe. "Lydia! You don't mean it! Why, my little girl! Lord, Kent! Isn't she just all right! Make me happy! Why, Lydia, you've made a young man of me—I swan—!"

Kent was holding one hand now, Amos the other. Both looked at Lydia with radiant faces. And she could but feel an answering glow.

"We'll make this up to you, Lyd, old lady," cried Kent. "See if we don't." There was a little pause during which the ice boomed. Then,

"Well, what happens next, now you've settled me?" asked Lydia.

"Something to eat," exclaimed Amos. "I didn't eat any supper. I swear I haven't eaten for months with any relish. Lydia, make us some chocolate or something."

As Lydia passed through the dining-room with her steaming tray, a little later, Lizzie called from her bed and Lydia set down the tray and went to her.

"Did they win you over, Lydia?" she asked. "I went to bed so's not to interrupt."

"Yes, they won me," said Lydia.

"Poor child! I never wished harder'n I have tonight that your mother hadn't died. But never mind! I guess it's just as well you gave in. Kent could win the heart of a bronze image. Drat him! Run along with the supper, Lydia."

"Now," said Kent, as he sipped his chocolate, "let's lay our plans."

"Not before me," exclaimed Lydia. "My one stipulation is that you don't tell me any of the details."

"All right," said Amos, hastily. "We'll do anything she wants, now, eh, Kent?"

"You bet," replied the young man.

That night, after Kent had gone, Lydia stood long at the living-room window which gave on the front gate. The pine, its boughs powdered with snow, kept its lonely vigil over the cottage.

"Yes," whispered Lydia, finally, "your last friend has deserted you, but I guess I'm keeping faith with Kent and Dad, anyhow."

Then she went to bed.

For a day or so Lydia avoided Billy Norton. But she was restless and unhappy and found it difficult to keep her mind on her college work. Finally, she timed her return from the dairy school, one afternoon, to coincide with Billy's home-coming from his office and she overtook him Just beyond the end of the street-car line. The sun was sinking and the wind was rising.

"Billy!" called Lydia.

He turned and waited for her with a broad smile.

"Billy," she said without preliminaries, "I gave in!"

"Lydia!" he gasped.

"I couldn't stand their pleading. I gave in. I hate myself, but Dad looks ten years younger!"

"You actually mean you're letting yourself get mixed up with the Whiskey Trust and that pup of a Dave Marshall?"

Lydia plodded doggedly through the snow. "Of course, Kent's tending to all that, I refuse to be told the details."

"Lydia!" cried Billy again and there was such a note of pain in his voice that she turned her face to his with the same dogged look in her eyes that had been expressed in her walk.

"Why," he said, "what am I going to do without you to look up to—to live up to? You can't mean it!"

"But I do mean it. I fought and fought and I have for years till I'm sick of it. Now, at least, there'll be no more poverty for Dad to complain of."

"'Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribband to wear in his coat,'"

quoted Billy bitterly. "Lydia, I can't believe it!"

"It's true," repeated Lydia. "I couldn't stand Kent and Dad both. And partly I did it for John Levine's memory. I'm not trying to justify myself Billy. I know that I'm doing something wrong, but I've definitely made up my mind to sacrifice my own ease of conscience to Dad's happiness."

"You can't do it! You aren't built that way," exclaimed Billy.

"But I am doing it," reiterated Lydia.

"Look here," he cried, eagerly, "do you expect to keep my respect and yet go on with this?"

Lydia did not reply for some time. They were nearing the cottage, and she could see the pine, black against the afterglow, when she said,

"Well, I'm not keeping my own self-respect and yet, I'm glad I'm making Dad and Kent happy."

"Kent! Wait till I see him!"

"You can't change Kent, if I couldn't," replied Lydia.

"I'll not try to change him," said Billy grimly. "I'll tell him what I think of him, though."

They paused by the gate. Billy looked down at Lydia with a puzzled frown.

"How about 'Ducit Amor Patriae' now, Lydia?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "Good night, Billy."

"Good-by, Lydia," said the young man heavily and he turned away, leaving her standing at the gate.

But though she had maintained a calm front with Billy, Lydia went over and over their conversation that night feverishly before she went to sleep. She tossed and turned and then long after the old livingroom clock had struck midnight, she slipped out of bed and crouched on her knees, her hands clasped across her pillow, her eyes on the quiet stars that glowed through the window.

"O God," she prayed, "O God, if You do exist, help me now! Don't let me lose Billy's respect for I don't know how I can get along without it. God! God! Make me believe in You, for I must have Some One to turn to! You have taken mother and little Patience and John Levine from me! Oh, let me keep Billy! Let me keep him, God, and make me strong enough to keep on accepting that three hundred and twenty acres. Amen."

Shivering, but somehow quieted, she crept into bed and fell asleep.



CHAPTER XX

THE YOUNGEST SCHOLAR

"The Indians knew no home, and so they died."—The Murmuring Pine.

If Amos was not happy after Lydia's concession, at least she never had seen him so interested in life as he was now. Nor had Kent ever been more considerate of Lydia. They went to a number of dances and skated together frequently in spite of the fact that Kent was very busy with his real estate work.

All this, Lydia told herself, should have made her happy, and yet, she was not. Even when Professor Willis took her to a Military hop and brought her home in a hack, she was conscious of the feverish sense of loss and uncertainty that had become a part of her daily living. Several times she had an almost overwhelming desire to tell him what she had done. But she could not bear to destroy the ideal she knew he had of her, even for the relief of receiving his sympathy, of which she was very sure.

Billy came to see her as usual, and took her to an occasional dance. But he was not the friend of old. And the change was not in any neglect of things done, it was in his way of looking at her; in his long silences when he studied her face with a grieved, puzzled look that made her frantic; in his ceasing to talk over his work with her with any air of comradeship, and most of all in his ceasing to bully her—that inalienable earmark of the attitude of the lover toward the beloved.

Lydia's nerves began to feel the strain before spring came in. She was pale in the morning and fever-flushed in the afternoon and her hands were uncertain. March was long and bleak, that year, but April came in as sweetly as a silver bugle call. The first week in April the ice went out of the lake with a crash and boom and mighty upheaval, leaving a pellucid calm of blue waters that brought a new light to Lydia's face. She heard the first robin call on her way home from college, the day that the ice went out.

She had walked up the road ahead of Billy, her black scholar's gown fluttering. Once, he would have run to overtake her, but now he plodded along a block behind, without a sound. Lydia did not pause at the cottage gate. The call of the robin was in her blood and she swung on up the road, past the Norton place, and into the woods.

Young April was there, with its silence a-tip-toe, and its warmth and chill. Lydia drew a deep breath and paused where through the trunks of the white birches she caught the glimmer of the lake. There was a log at hand and she sat down, threw her mortar-board on the ground and rested, chin cupped in her hands, lips parted, eyes tear dimmed. She was weary of thought. She only knew that the spiritual rightness with which she had sustained her mind and body through all the hard years of her youth, had gone wrong. She only knew that a loneliness of soul she could not seem to endure was robbing her of a youth that as yet she had scarcely tasted.

She sat without stirring. The blue of the lake began to turn orange. The robin's note grew fainter. Suddenly there was the sound of hasty footsteps through the dead leaves. Lydia looked up. Billy was striding toward her. She did not speak, nor did he. It seemed to her that she never had noticed before how mature Billy's face was in its new gauntness, nor how deep and direct was his gaze.

He strode up to the log, stooped, and drew Lydia to her feet. Then he lifted her, scholar's gown and all, in his arms and kissed her full on the lips, kissed her long and passionately, then looked deep into her eyes and held her to him until she could feel his heart beating full and quick.

For just a moment, Lydia did not stir, then she threw her arms around his neck, hid her face against his shoulder and clung to him with an intensity that made him tremble.

The robin's note grew sweeter, fainter. The lake lap-lapped beyond the birches. Billy slipped his hand under Lydia's cheek and turned her face so that he could look into her eyes. At what he saw there, his own firm lips quivered.

"Lydia!" he whispered.

Then he kissed her again.

Lydia freed herself from his arms, though he kept both of her hands in his.

"Now," he said gently, with a smile of a quality Lydia never had seen on his lips before, "now, sweetheart, are you going to be good?"

"Yes," murmured Lydia, with the contralto lilt in her voice. "What do you want me to do. Billy?"

"I want what you want, dearest. I want the old Lydia with the vision. Has she come back, or shall I have to look for her again?"

He started as if to take Lydia in his arms once more, but with a sudden rich little laugh, she stepped away from him.

"She's here—Oh, Billy, dearest! How could you let her wander around alone so long."

"It didn't hurt my cause any for her to miss me," answered Billy, grimly, "though I didn't realize that till a moment ago. Stop your trembling, Lydia. I'm here to look out for you, for the rest of time."

"I can hear Adam barking," said Lydia. "Dad must have come home. Take me back, Billy."

"All right," replied Billy. "I will just as soon as you tell me something."

Lydia looked up into his face. "Not that just yet, please, Billy. I must make things right with Dad and Kent."

Billy seized her shoulders. "Is there anything between you and Kent, Lydia?" he said, jealously.

"Not in words," she answered, "but of course he's gone ahead with my land deal, with the idea he'd share in it."

Billy's hands tightened on her shoulders. "Dear," Lydia went on pleadingly, "don't spoil this perfect moment. We must have this, always, no matter what comes."

"Nothing can come," replied Billy sternly. "Give me your hand, little girl. It's getting cold in these woods."

They walked back to the cottage in silence, hand in hand. They paused at the gate and Lydia pointed through the dusk at the new moon.

"Let's wish on it," she said. "Close your eyes, and wish."

Billy closed his eyes. A kiss as soft as the robin's note fell on his lips and the gate clicked. He opened his eyes and stood looking up the path long after the door closed, his hat in his hand.

Lydia wandered into the dining-room quite casually.

"For heaven's sake, Lydia!" cried Amos. "I was just going to start on a hunt for you!"

"I took a walk in the woods," explained Lydia, "and was gone longer than I realized."

"Supper's ready. Sit right down," said Lizzie, looking at Lydia, intently.

Amos was absorbed in his own thoughts during the meal. He and Kent had both been worried and absent minded, lately. He paid no heed to the fact that Lydia only played with her food and that during the meal she smiled at nothing. But old Lizzie, who had worried herself half sick over Lydia, watched her with growing curiosity.

"Seen Kent, to-day, Lydia?" she asked.

After a moment—"Did you speak to me, Lizzie?" Lydia inquired.

"Yes, I did. I asked if you'd seen Kent to-day."

"I? No, I haven't seen Kent. We had a quiz in chemistry, to-day."

"What's that got to do with anything?" grunted Lizzie. But she asked no more questions.

Ma Norton came over during the evening to borrow some yeast. Amos was working over some figures on a bit of paper. Lydia was sitting with a text book in front of her. She had not turned a leaf in twenty minutes, to Lizzie's actual count.

"Spring's here," said Ma. "Though there's still a bite in the air. Not that Billy seems to notice it. I found him sitting on the front steps with his cigar, as if it was June."

Lizzie gave Lydia a quick look and wondered if she only imagined that her cheeks were turning pinker.

"I can't sit down," Ma went on, "I've got to set this sponge to rise."

"I'll walk home with you, Mrs. Norton," said Lydia, suddenly. "It seems as if one couldn't get enough of this first spring day."

"Do!" Ma's voice was always extra cordial when she spoke to Lydia.

Lizzie watched the door close behind the two. "I knew it," she exclaimed.

"Knew what?" inquired Amos, looking up from his figures.

"That there was a new moon," answered the old lady, shortly, trudging off to her bedroom.

"Liz is getting childish," thought Amos, returning to his work.

"Bill's still on the front porch," said Ma Norton as they reached the Norton driveway. "Do go speak to him, Lydia. He's amiable to-night, but he's been like a bear for months."

Billy's mother went on into the kitchen entrance and Lydia went over to the dim figure on the steps.

"Your mother told me to speak to you," she said meekly.

"I heard her." Billy gave a low laugh. "Come up here in the shadow, sweetheart, and tell me if you ever saw such a moonlit and starlit night."

But Lydia did not stir. "Honestly, I don't dare look at the sky any longer. I have a quiz in rhetoric to-morrow and I've got to get my mind on it."

Billy came down the steps. "Then I'll walk home with you."

"No, you won't. I—I just came over to see if it's all real. Just to touch you and then run back. I'd rather you didn't walk back with me."

The night was brilliant and Billy, responding to some little petitioning note in Lydia's voice, did not offer to touch her but stood looking down at the sweet dim face turned up to his. She lifted her hand, that thin hand with the work calluses on it, and ran it over his cheeks, brushed her cheek against his shoulder, and then ran away.

She finished her studying and went to bed early, only to lie awake for hours. At last, she crept out of bed and as once before, she clasped her hands and lifted her face to the heavens. "Thank you, God!" she whispered. Then she went to sleep.

The next night, Kent came out to the cottage. Lydia dreaded his coming so little that she was surprised. Yet this day had been one of continual surprise to her. She had wakened to a dawn of robin songs, and had dressed with an answering song in her own heart. She was as one who had never known sorrow or anxiety. Her whole future lay before her, a clear and unobstructed pathway.

For Lydia had found herself. She was a creature to whom a great love and devotion were essential as motive forces. In turn she had given this, in childish form, to her mother, to little Patience and to Levine. One by one these had been taken from her and she had struggled to give this devotion to Kent, but she could not give where there was no understanding.

And now she saw that for years it had been Billy. Billy who combined all the best of what her mother, her baby sister, and Levine had meant to her, with something greatly more—the divinity of passion—a thing she could not understand, yet that had created a new world for her.

Kent tossed his hat on the couch and shook his head at Amos. "Dave's not going to get away with it. He's got some kind of a row going with the Whiskey people and he says we might as well count him out. I don't know what to do now."

Amos groaned. "Lord, what luck!"

"Don't let it worry you," said Lydia calmly. "I made up my mind to-day that I'd go ahead and enter on that land just as other folks are doing, in the good old way. I'm going to make a farm up there, that will blot out all memory of what Mr. Levine did. But I'm going to work for it as a homesteader has to and not take any advantage through Mr. Levine's graft."

Kent looked up crossly. "Oh, Lydia, for heaven's sake, don't begin that again!"

Lydia crossed the room and put her hand on Kent's shoulder as he sat on the couch.

"Kent, look at me," she said, then, very quietly, "I'm going to homestead that land." There was no escaping the note of finality in her decision.

Kent's face whitened. He looked up steadily at Lydia. Amos and Lizzie sensed that they were spectators of a deeper crisis than they understood and they watched breathlessly. Kent rose slowly. The sweat stood on his forehead.

"You know what that means, as far as I'm concerned," he said.

Lydia, chin up, gaze never more clearly blue, nodded.

"Yes, Kent, but we never would have been happy. You and Margery were meant for each other, anyhow."

"Lydia! Lydia!" exclaimed Kent hoarsely, half angrily, half pleadingly.

"No, you won't feel badly, when you think it over. Go to Margery now and tell her, Kent."

Kent picked up his cap. "I—I don't understand," he said. Then, angrily, "You aren't treating me right, Lydia. I'll talk to you when I'm not so sore," and he walked out of the house.

Lydia turned to Amos and Lizzie. "There," she said, happily, "I've got Kent settled for life!"

Amos sank into his armchair. "Lydia, have you lost your mind!" he groaned.

"No, I've found it, Daddy. Poor Dad, don't look as if you'd fathered a lunatic!"

Amos shook his head.

"Daddy, let's homestead that land! Let's quit this idea of getting something by graft. Let's do like our forefathers did. Let's homestead that land! Let's earn it by farming it."

Lydia's father looked at her, long and meditatively. He was pretty well discouraged about the probability of ever getting a clear title to the land through Kent or Marshall. And the longer he looked at Lydia, the more his mind reverted to New England, to old tales of the farm on which he and his ancestors had been bred.

"A man with three hundred and twenty acres of land is a power in the community," he said, suddenly.

"Oh, yes, Dad!" cried Lydia.

"You never know what a feeling of independence is," said Lizzie, "till you own land and raise wheat."

Amos stared out the door into the darkness. Little by little Lydia saw creeping into his face new lines of determination, a new sort of pride that the thought of the selling of the lands had not put there. He cleared his throat.

"Hang it, Lydia, I'm not as hard as you think I am. I want you to be happy. And I'm not so damned old as you think I am. I'm good for homesteading, if you and Liz are. A farmer with three hundred and twenty acres! God!"

Lydia nodded. Amos began to walk the floor. "I'm still a young man. If I had the backing that land gives a man, I could clean out a lot of rottenness in the State. Even if I only did it by showing what a man with a clean record could make of himself."

"That's just the point," cried Lydia eagerly, "and your record wouldn't have been clean, if you'd gotten it through Marshall."

"What young men need nowadays," Amos went on, "is to get back to the old idea of land ownership. Three hundred and twenty acres! Lydia, why can't I enter on it to-morrow?"

"Why not?" asked Lydia.

"If I take Brown's offer for the cottage, it would leave us enough to get a team and I bet I could hire a tractor to get to the cleared portion of it, this Fall. A hundred acres are clear, you know. I might as well quit the factory now, eh, Lydia?"

With a laugh that had a sob in it, Lydia kissed her father and whirled out the door. Billy was coming in at the gate. She flew down to seize his hand and turn him toward the road.

"Let's walk! I've such quantities to tell you!"

Billy turned obediently, but paused in the shadow of the pine. "Lydia, I can't tell you what it means to me. No matter what bigger things may seem to happen to me, nothing can equal the things I've felt and dreamed to-day."

Then he put his arms about Lydia and kissed her, and she put her arms about his neck and laid her head against his shoulder. They stood thus motionless while the pine whispered above them. And in the intensity of that embrace all the griefs of Lydia's life were hallowed and made purposeful.

"Lydia," said Billy, "I want to tell Mother and Dad. Will you come over home with me, now?"

"Yes," replied Lydia, "and then we must tell my father and Lizzie. Oh, Billy, I forgot," as they started down the road, "I've decided to homestead that land."

"But—why, Lydia dear, you're going to be a lawyer's wife. For heaven's sake, let that beastly land go."

"No, I'm going to be a pioneer's wife!"

There was a little pause, then Billy laughed uncertainly. "Well, I'm not going to talk about it to-night. I'm in a frame of mind to-night where I'd promise you to be an Indian chief if you ask it. Mother and Dad are in the kitchen."

They opened the kitchen door and stepped in. Pa Norton was sitting in his stocking feet, reading the evening paper. Ma was putting away the day's baking. She paused with a loaf of bread in her hand as the two came in and Pa looked over his glasses.

"Mother and Dad," said Billy, uncertainly, "I—I've brought Lydia home to you! Look at her, Dad! Isn't she a peach!"

Lydia stood with her back against the door, cheeks scarlet, golden head held high, but her lips quivering.

Ma dropped her loaf of bread. "Oh, Lydia," she cried, "I thought that numskull of a Billy never would see daylight! I've prayed for this for years. Come straight over here to your mother, love."

But Pa Norton had dropped his paper when Ma dropped her bread and had not paused for comments. He made three strides to Lydia, and gave her a great hug and a kiss. Then he said, "First time I saw you carrying that milk for Billy's books, I said, there's the wife Billy ought to have. Ma, wasn't she the dearest—"

But Ma shoved him aside contemptuously. "Get over and talk to Billy. This is a woman's affair. Who cares about reminiscences now. Oh, Billy, do you remember I used to worry because she didn't keep the back of her neck clean!"

"Who's reminiscencing now?" asked Pa belligerently.

Everybody laughed. Then Pa sighed. "Well, I feel almost reconciled now to Bill's giving up farming. When're you going to be married?"

Lydia blushed. "Oh, not for a long time. Now, let's go and tell my people, Billy."

Out in the night again! Curious how long the short walk to the cottage could be made! Curious how near the stars were—heaven just over the road where the lovers strolled. Not strange that such ecstasy cannot last forever. The human mind could not bear that heaven-born rapture too long.

Lizzie was mending. Amos was sitting in his arm chair, with a bit of paper on which he was figuring. Lydia flew across the room and dropped on her knees beside him.

"Oh, Daddy dear, look at me! Billy's here and he's always going to be here. Tell us you're glad."

Amos looked up with a jerk. First at Billy standing stalwart and grave by the table, his deep eyes as steady as the hand he held out to Lizzie. Then at his daughter, with her transformed face.

"But," protested Amos, "I thought it was to be Kent."

"Oh, it couldn't have been Kent," exclaimed Lydia. "We never would have understood each other. Kent was for Margery."

A frown gathered on Amos' face. He did not really want Lydia to marry any one. All that had reconciled him to the thought of Kent had been Kent's relation to the Indian lands. And now, he discovered that he didn't want to give his daughter to any one. He threw a jealous arm about her.

"No, you can't have her, Billy," he said. "Nobody shall have her. She's too good for the best man living."

"Yes, she is," agreed Billy. "But that isn't the point. The point is that Lydia actually wants me. I don't understand it myself, but she does and I know I can make her happy."

"I can make her happy myself," said Amos, gruffly.

"But you haven't," retorted Billy. "Look at the way you've acted about this land matter. And God knows, she deserves to be happy at any cost. Good heavens, when I think of her, it seems to me that nothing could be too much for her. I think of her trudging those miles in her patched old clothes to buy her school books—what a thin, big-eyed kiddie she was. Why, even as a cub, I used to appreciate her. And then when she stood up before the hearing, the bravest man among us, and when she got sick trying to earn those silly Prom clothes—— My God, Amos, if Lydia wants me, or the moon, or a town lot in South Africa, it's up to you to give it to her."

Amos did not reply for a moment. Down through the years he was watching a thin little figure trudge with such patience and sweetness and determination as he seemed never before to have appreciated. Slowly his hold loosened on Lydia's shoulders and he looked into her face.

"Do you want to marry Billy?" he asked.

"Oh, Daddy, yes," whispered Lydia.

Amos looked up at the young man, who stood returning his gaze. "Take her, Billy, and heaven help you if you're not good to her, for John Levine's spirit will haunt you with a curse."

Billy raised Lydia to her feet and the extraordinary smile was on his face.

"What do you think about it, Lizzie?" he asked. Lizzie, who had been crying comfortably, wiped her eyes with the sock she was darning.

"I'm thinking that any one that can bring the look to Lydia's face she's been wearing for twenty-four hours, deserves her. Rheumatism or no, down I get on my old knees to-night and give thanks—just for the look in that child's eyes."

And now for a while, Lydia was content to live absolutely in the present, as was Billy. Surely there never was such an April. And surely no April ever melted so softly into so glorious a May. Apple blossoms, lilac blooms, violets and wind flowers and through them, Lydia in her scholar's gown, hanging to Billy's arm, after the day's work was done.

She seemed singularly uninterested in the preparations for Commencement, though she went through her final examinations with credit. But the week before Commencement she came home one afternoon with blazing cheeks. Billy was at the cottage for supper and when they had begun the meal, she exploded her bomb.

"Dad! Billy! Lizzie! They've elected me a member of the Scholars' Club!"

"For the love of heaven!" exclaimed Amos, dropping his fork.

"Why not?" asked Lizzie.

"Lydia, dear, but I'm proud of you," breathed Billy.

"Professor Willis told me, this afternoon," Lydia went on, "and I laughed at him at first. I thought he was teasing me. Why only high-brows belong to the Scholars' Club! Prexy belongs and the best of the professors and only a few of the post-graduate pupils. But he says I was elected. I told him lots of students had higher standings than I, and he only laughed and said he knew it. And I've got to go to that banquet of theirs next week!"

"Fine!" said Billy.

"Fine! Why, Billy Norton, I never went to a banquet in my life. I don't know what forks to use, and I never saw a finger bowl!"

Amos grinned. "What's the use of being a scholar, if that sort of thing bothers you?"

"I might get a book on etiquette and polish up," said Lydia, thoughtfully. "I'll get one to-morrow, and practise on the family."

Amos groaned, but to no avail. Lydia borrowed a book on etiquette from the library and for a week Amos ate his supper with an array of silver and kitchen-ware before him that took his appetite away. He rebelled utterly at using the finger bowls, which at breakfast were porridge dishes. Lizzie, however, was apt and read the book so diligently while Lydia was in class that she was able to correct Lydia as well as Amos at night.

Ma Norton had insisted on making Lydia a white mull graduation dress. She would not let either Lizzie or Lydia help her. She had been daughter-hungry all her life and since she made her own wedding gown, no bit of sewing had given her the satisfaction that this did.

So it was that Lydia, wearing the mull under her scholar's gown, and with the precepts of the book on etiquette in her mind, attended the Scholars' banquet, timidly but not with the self-consciousness that she might otherwise have felt.

Billy left her at the door of the hall and Professor Willis took her in to dinner. There were only two other women there, but Lydia did not mind.

"You never told me," said Willis, after Lydia had safely chosen her salad fork, "what you've done about the three hundred and twenty acres."

Lydia looked up at him quickly. She had been dreading this moment for some time.

"I'm going to give up John Levine's claim on it, and enter on it as a homesteader."

"But what an undertaking!" exclaimed Willis.

"I'll not go alone," said Lydia gently. "Billy Norton will go with me."

Willis turned white, and laid down his salad fork. Lydia turned her head away, then looked back, her eyes a little tear dimmed.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be," he answered, after a moment. "You never did a kinder thing than to tell me this now—before—not but what it would have been too late, had you told me two years ago."

"Oh, I am so sorry," repeated Lydia miserably.

"But you mustn't be! Besides, you and I are both scholars and scholars are always philosophers!"

He was silent for the rest of the banquet, in spite of his philosophy. But when he was called on for his toast, which was the last one, he rose coolly enough, and began steadily,

"My toast is to all scholars, everywhere, but also to one scholar in particular. It is to one who was born with a love of books, to one who made books—good books—so intimate a part of her life that she made poverty a blessing, who combined books and living so deeply that she read her community aright, when others failed to do so, to one who is a scholar in the truest sense of the word—a book lover with a vision. I drink to the youngest and sweetest scholar of us all!" and he bowed to Lydia.

How she got through the congratulations and out to Billy, patiently waiting at the main campus gate, Lydia was not sure, for she was quite drunk with surprise and pleasure. After she had told it all to Billy, and once more they were standing under the pine at the gate, she said,

"Billy, will you go up with Father and Lizzie and me to open up the three hundred and twenty acres?"

Billy answered slowly. "There's nothing I'd like better. I was born to be a farmer. But, Lydia, it looks to me as if, as a lawyer, I'd be a more useful citizen, the way things are now in the country."

Lydia shook her head. "We've got too many lawyers in America. What I think America needs is real love of America. And it seems to me the best way to get it is to identify oneself with the actual soil of the community. What I want is this. That you and I, upon the ground where poor John Levine did such wrongs, build us a home. I don't mean a home as Americans usually mean the word. I mean we'll try to found a family there. We'll send the roots of our roof tree so deep into the ground that for generations to come our children's children will be found there and our family name will stand for old American ideals in the community. I don't see how else we Americans can make up to the world for the way we've exploited America."

Billy stood with his arm about the slender "scholar." Suddenly there flooded in upon him the old, old call, the call that had brought his Pilgrim forefathers across the Atlantic, the call that was as old as the yearning for freedom of the soil.

"Lord!" he cried, "how glad I'll be to go up there! Think of beginning our life together with such a dream!"

"I believe John Levine would be glad, if he knew," said Lydia, wistfully.

"I know he'd be glad. . . . Lydia, do you love me, dear?"

"Love you! Oh, more than all the world! You know it, don't you?"

"I know it, but I can't believe it." His arm tightened around Lydia and as on just such an evening, four years before, he said,

"What a wonderful night!"

A wonderful night, indeed! Sound and scent of bursting summer. Syringas coming as lilacs went. The lake, lap-lapping on the shore. The lazy croak of frogs and the moon sinking low over the cottage. Above them the pine, murmuring as of old. Life and the year at the full. A wonderful night, indeed!

THE END