"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.
"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.