He leaned toward her as he spoke and Lydia shivered.  “I won’t,” she whispered.  Then she said aloud in sudden resentment, “But I’m not going to throw Mr. Levine down without his having a chance to explain.  Who are you to think you’ve got a right to ask me?”

Charlie caught her slender wrist in a firm grasp.  “I’m a human being fighting for justice—­no—­fighting for existence.  That’s who I am.”

“Oh, I don’t want to know about it!” cried Lydia.  “I don’t want to think about it!  I’m just a girl.  I want to be happy just a little while before I grow up.  I’ve had too much unhappiness.”

“Yes, you have had,” agreed Charlie, grimly, “and that’s why you will think about it in spite of yourself.  You understand how I feel because you’ve suffered.  When are you going to throw Levine down?”

Lydia’s face whitened.  “Never!” she said.

“What!  When you know he’s a murderer?”

“He never intended to kill your father.  Anyhow, I can’t help what he’s done.  He’s like my own father and brother and mother all in one to me.”

The two young people sat looking into each other’s eyes.  Suddenly Charlie threw Lydia’s hand from him, and like Billy Norton, he strode down the path and out of the gate without a word.  Lydia was trembling violently but she picked up her sewing and forced herself to finish the rugs and spread them on the living-room floor.  They looked very well, she thought.  Later on, they showed a vicious tendency to turn up, to wrinkle and scuffle easily, threatening the life and limb of the heavy treading Lizzie and of Amos a dozen times a day.  But the evening after Charlie’s visit she was too distrait to notice the complaints of her elders.

Levine did not appear at the cottage for several days.  During that time Lydia tried to put Charlie’s story out of her mind.  With housework and swimming and giggling with Margery, she managed to do this during the day, but at night she dreamed of it and woke, and spoke to Adam.

When John did come out she avoided talking to him and he caught her several times looking at him with a sad and puzzled expression.  When they started on their usual Sunday walk, Amos went back to the house for his cane and Levine said, abruptly, “Out with it, young Lydia!”

“I promised I wouldn’t,” she said.

“Been hearing more stories about my wickedness?” asked John.

Lydia nodded, miserably.

“My dear,” Levine said quietly, “this is a man’s game.  I’m playing a rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can fight.  In it, the weak must fail and maybe die.  But out of it a great good will come to this community.  As long as the Indians are here to exploit, this community will be demoralized.  I’m using every means fair or foul to carry my purpose.  Can’t you let it go at that?”

Lydia set her teeth.  “Yes, I can and I will,” she said, as her father came up with his cane.