Kent tossed his hat on the couch and shook his head at Amos.  “Dave’s not going to get away with it.  He’s got some kind of a row going with the Whiskey people and he says we might as well count him out.  I don’t know what to do now.”

Amos groaned.  “Lord, what luck!”

“Don’t let it worry you,” said Lydia calmly.  “I made up my mind to-day that I’d go ahead and enter on that land just as other folks are doing, in the good old way.  I’m going to make a farm up there, that will blot out all memory of what Mr. Levine did.  But I’m going to work for it as a homesteader has to and not take any advantage through Mr. Levine’s graft.”

Kent looked up crossly.  “Oh, Lydia, for heaven’s sake, don’t begin that again!”

Lydia crossed the room and put her hand on Kent’s shoulder as he sat on the couch.

“Kent, look at me,” she said, then, very quietly, “I’m going to homestead that land.”  There was no escaping the note of finality in her decision.

Kent’s face whitened.  He looked up steadily at Lydia.  Amos and Lizzie sensed that they were spectators of a deeper crisis than they understood and they watched breathlessly.  Kent rose slowly.  The sweat stood on his forehead.

“You know what that means, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

Lydia, chin up, gaze never more clearly blue, nodded.

“Yes, Kent, but we never would have been happy.  You and Margery were meant for each other, anyhow.”

“Lydia!  Lydia!” exclaimed Kent hoarsely, half angrily, half pleadingly.

“No, you won’t feel badly, when you think it over.  Go to Margery now and tell her, Kent.”

Kent picked up his cap.  “I—­I don’t understand,” he said.  Then, angrily, “You aren’t treating me right, Lydia.  I’ll talk to you when I’m not so sore,” and he walked out of the house.

Lydia turned to Amos and Lizzie.  “There,” she said, happily, “I’ve got Kent settled for life!”

Amos sank into his armchair.  “Lydia, have you lost your mind!” he groaned.

“No, I’ve found it, Daddy.  Poor Dad, don’t look as if you’d fathered a lunatic!”

Amos shook his head.

“Daddy, let’s homestead that land!  Let’s quit this idea of getting something by graft.  Let’s do like our forefathers did.  Let’s homestead that land!  Let’s earn it by farming it.”

Lydia’s father looked at her, long and meditatively.  He was pretty well discouraged about the probability of ever getting a clear title to the land through Kent or Marshall.  And the longer he looked at Lydia, the more his mind reverted to New England, to old tales of the farm on which he and his ancestors had been bred.

“A man with three hundred and twenty acres of land is a power in the community,” he said, suddenly.

“Oh, yes, Dad!” cried Lydia.

“You never know what a feeling of independence is,” said Lizzie, “till you own land and raise wheat.”