So for an hour longer they sat, watching the summer night and waiting.  And sometimes it seemed to Lydia that they were a pioneer man and woman sitting in their prairie schooner watching for the Indians.  And sometimes it seemed to her that they were the last white man and woman, that civilization had died and the hordes were coming down upon them.

Finally two dim figures approached.  “All right, Lydia?” asked Amos.

“Oh, yes!  Yes!” she cried.  “Are either of you hurt?”

“No,” replied Levine, “but we stayed till I’d got my half-breeds distributed about to watch that none of the full bloods got out of the meadow.”

“Was any one hurt?” asked Billy.

“Oh, two or three broken heads among both Indians and whites.  We got hold of Charlie Jackson about eleven and locked him up, then we felt secure.”

“You aren’t going to hurt Charlie!” cried Lydia.

“No, but we’ll shut him up for a week or so,” said Amos.  “Move over, Lizzie.”

“Goodness,” exclaimed Lizzie, “I must have dozed off for a minute!”

In the laughter that followed, Levine started the car homeward.

During the trip, the story was told of Lydia’s mishap, Billy and Lydia interpolating each other in the telling.  Amos shook hands with Billy silently when they had finished and Levine turned round from the wheel to say,

“I’ll not forget this night’s work, Bill.”

They reached home at daylight.  The Celebration made table talk and newspaper space for several days.  No real attempt was made to punish the Indians.  For once, the whites, moved by a sense of tardy and inadequate justice, withheld their hands.

Kent never ceased to mourn that he had missed the affair.  He confided the fact to Lydia one Sunday that he had told Levine of their eavesdropping on him in the woods.

“What did he say?” asked Lydia, flushing.

“Gave me this nice fat job,” replied Kent.

Lydia stared, then she sighed.  “Well, I don’t understand men at all!”

And Kent laughed.

Lydia saw a good deal of Billy during the summer.  He never spoke of the accident to her at the Celebration, except to inquire about her bruises which troubled her for a week or so.  Lydia wondered if he was ashamed of his wild flame of anger and his tears.  She herself never thought of the episode without a thrill, as if she had been close for once to the primal impulses of life.

Margery Marshall and Elviry went to Atlantic City and Newport this summer.  John Levine was sure to take supper at the cottage once or twice a week, but he was very busy with his political work and with the enormous sales of mixed-breed lands to the whites.

It was just before college opened that Amos announced that he was going to buy the one hundred and twenty acres John had set aside for him.

“How are you going to pay for it?” Lydia asked.