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."
Amos stared out the door into the darkness. Little by little Lydia saw creeping into his face new lines of determination, a new sort of pride that the thought of the selling of the lands had not put there. He cleared his throat.
"Hang it, Lydia, I'm not as hard as you think I am. I want you to be happy. And I'm not so damned old as you think I am. I'm good for homesteading, if you and Liz are. A farmer with three hundred and twenty acres! God!"
Lydia nodded. Amos began to walk the floor. "I'm still a young man. If I had the backing that land gives a man, I could clean out a lot of rottenness in the State. Even if I only did it by showing what a man with a clean record could make of himself."
"That's just the point," cried Lydia eagerly, "and your record wouldn't have been clean, if you'd gotten it through Marshall."
"What young men need nowadays," Amos went on, "is to get back to the old idea of land ownership. Three hundred and twenty acres! Lydia, why can't I enter on it to-morrow?"
"Why not?" asked Lydia.