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.