“Oh, there’s a cheap bunch of sentimentalists in the town,—­all of ’em, you’ll notice, with good incomes,—­who claim the Indians are like children, so we should take care of ’em like children.  Then there’s another bunch who make a fat living looting the Indians.  They don’t want the reservation broken up.  I’m going to sit on the back seat of the car and smoke.”

Lydia clambered into the seat beside her father.  “Well—­but—­well, I suppose if Mr. Levine feels that way and you too, it’s right.  But they are kind of like children.  Charlie Jackson’s awful smart, but he’s like a child too.”

“I don’t care what they’re like,” said Amos.  “We’ve babied ’em long enough.  Let ’em get out and hustle.”

“Do you think Mr. Levine’ll get elected?”

Amos shrugged his shoulders.  “Never can tell.  This is a Democratic town, but Levine is standing for something both Democrats and Republicans want.  It’ll be a pretty fight.  May split the Democratic party.”

This was the beginning of Lydia’s reading of the newspapers.  To her father’s secret amusement, she found the main details of Levine’s battle as interesting as a novel.  Every evening when he got home to supper he found her poring over the two local papers and primed with questions for him.  Up to this moment she had lived in a quiet world bounded by her school, the home, the bit of lake shore and wood with which she was intimate, and peopled by her father and her few friends.

With John Levine’s speech, her horizon suddenly expanded to take in the city and the vague picture of the reservation to the north.  She realized that the eyes of the whole community were focused on her dearest friend.  Up on the quiet, shaded college campus—­the newspapers told her—­they spoke of him contemptuously.  He was a cheap politician, full of unsound economic principles, with a history of dishonest land deals behind him.  It would be a shame to the community to be represented by such a man.  They said that his Democratic opponent, a lawyer who had been in Congress some five terms, was at least a gentleman whose career had been a clean and open book.

When these slurs reached Levine, he answered in a vitriolic speech in which he named the names of several members of the faculty who had profited through the Indian agent in quiet little sales of worthless goods to Indians.

The saloon element, Lydia learned, was against Levine.  It wanted the reservation to stand.  That the saloon element should be in harmony with them was galling to the college crowd, though the fact that their motives for agreement were utterly different was some solace.

The “fast crowd” were for John.  Clubmen, politicians, real estate men were high in his praise.  The farmers all were going to vote for him.

Lake City was always interested in the national election but this year, where the presidential candidates were mentioned once, Levine and his opponent were mentioned a hundred times.  Ministers preached sermons on the campaign.  The Ladies’ Aid Society of the Methodist Church, the Needlework Guild of the Episcopalian, the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Unitarian, hereditary enemies, combined forces to work for Levine, and the freeing of the poor Indian from bondage.