“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.