“Good God!” cried Amos, tossing his pipe on the table, “poverty’s hounded me all my life—­poverty and death.  The only two people who cared about me, Patience and Levine’re gone.  Yet here’s the chance for me to be independent.  Here’s a chance for me to make up for the failure I’ve made of life.  A man with a little piece of property like this and a little bank account is somebody in the community.  What do I care how I get it, as long’s I can hold it?  What’s a lot of dirty Indians to stand between me and my future?  But what do you care?”

“O Daddy!  O Daddy!  How can you talk so to me!” groaned Lydia.  She put her hands over her eyes for a moment, swallowed a sob and then started for the outer door.  She caught her coat from the nail and closed the door behind her.

An irresistible impulse had carried her from the house.  She wanted to see Billy.  It was still early and a lantern flickered in the Norton barnyard.  She ran along the snowy road and down the drive of the Norton yard, pausing beside a lilac bush to see whether it was Billy or his father just entering the cowshed.  It was Billy and she ran across the barnyard to the shed door.  Billy was whistling to himself as he began to bed down the cattle for the night.  Lydia looked at him eagerly in the dim light.  How big and strong he was!

“Billy!” she said, softly.

The young man dropped his pitchfork and came toward her.  “What’s the matter, Lydia!” he exclaimed.

“Dad and I’ve been having an awful quarrel.”

“About the land?” asked Billy quickly.

Lydia nodded.  “Oh, I don’t know what to do!” And then, not having meant to do so at all, she suddenly began to cry.

“Why can’t they let you alone, damn ’em!” exclaimed Billy, furiously.  “Come away from that cold doorway, dear.”  And he led her into the warm stable and over to a harness box.  “There,” pulling her down beside him on the box, and putting his arm about her, “don’t cry, Lydia.  I can’t stand it.  I’m liable to go over and say things to your father and Kent.”

There was an edge to his voice as he said this that vaguely alarmed Lydia.  She wiped her eyes.

“Kent wasn’t there,” she said.

“No, but he’s behind your father in this.  I’ll tell ’em both, sometime, what I think of their bullying you this way.”

“Kent hasn’t bullied me,” insisted Lydia.

“No?  Well, give him time!  Poor little girl!  Don’t tremble so.  You don’t have to talk any more about it to any one.  Just send ’em to me.”

Lydia smiled through her tears.  “I can’t send my own father to you.  And you and Kent would come to blows.”

“We probably would,” replied Billy.  “Want my hanky or haven’t you wept yours full yet?”

“I’m not going to cry any more,” said Lydia, raising her head.  Billy still held her warmly in the circle of his arm.  The stable was dim and quiet and fragrant with clover.  “You’re such a comfort, Billy.  Now that John Levine’s gone, there’s no one understands me as you do.  How can I reconcile Dad to giving up the land?”