Lydia was wearing the corduroy outing suit of the year before and was looking extremely well.  Billy, in an ordinary business suit, was not the man of the world of Graduation night, yet there was a new maturity in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really observing it.  Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to the woods.  Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the farmer.  Lydia sprang over the ground with quick, easy step.

“Billy’s a man grown,” Lizzie said to herself, “and he’s a nice fellow, but he don’t tug at my old heart strings like Kent does—­drat Kent, anyhow!” She settled herself as conspicuously as possible in the automobile.  “If Elviry Marshall would pass now, I’d be perfectly happy,” she murmured.

Billy and Lydia entered the woods in silence and followed a sun-flecked aisle until the sound of the celebration was muffled save for the shrill notes of the mechanical piano, which had but two tunes, “Under the Bamboo Tree” and the “Miserere.”

“I hate to think of it all divided into farms and the pines cut down,” said Lydia.

Billy leaned against one of the great tree trunks and stared thoughtfully about him.

“I’m all mixed up, Lydia,” he said.  “It’s all wrong.  I know the things Levine and the rest are doing to get this land are wrong, and yet I don’t see how they can be stopped.”

“Well,” Lydia fanned herself with her hat, thoughtfully, “for years people have been telling me awful things Mr. Levine’s done to Indians and I worried and worried over it.  And finally, I decided to take Mr. Levine for the dear side he shows me and to stop thinking about the Indians.”

“You can stop thinking, perhaps,” said the young man, “but you can’t stop this situation up here from having an influence on your life.  Everybody in Lake City must be directly or indirectly affected by the reservation.  Everybody, from the legislators to the grocery keepers, has been grafting on the Indians.  Your own father says the thing that’s kept him going for years was the hope of Indian lands.  Margery Marshall’s clothed with Indian money.”

“And how about the influence on you, Billy?” asked Lydia with a keen look into the young fellow’s rugged face.

“I’m in the process of hating myself,” replied Billy, honestly.  “I came up here last month to see how bad off the Indians were.  And I saw the poor starving, diseased brutes and I cursed my white breed.  And yet, Lyd, I saw a tract of pine up in the middle of the reservation that I’d sell my soul to own!  It’s on a rise of ground, with a lake on one edge, and the soil is marvelous, and it belongs to a full-blood.”

There was understanding in Lydia’s eyes.  “Oh, the pines are wonderful,” she exclaimed.  “If one could only keep them, forever!  And I suppose that’s the way the Indians feel about them too!”

“It’s all wrong,” muttered Billy.  “It’s all wrong, and yet,” more firmly, “the reservation is doomed and if we don’t take some of it, Lydia, we’ll not be helping the Indians—­but just being foolish.”