"Yes! Yes!" whispered Levine. "It's going to sleep alone I——
Mother—"
Lydia knelt and sliding her arm under Levine's neck, she pulled his head over gently to rest on her shoulder. Then she began with infinite softness the little songs she had not uttered for so many years.
"'Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet;
Make it from simple flowers
Plucked from the lowly valleys
After the summer showers.'"
"'Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea . . .'"
"'I've reached the land of corn and wine
And all its riches surely mine.
I've reached that heavenly, shining shore
My heaven, my home, for evermore.'"
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.