Lydia looked up from her story with a quick flash of tragedy in her eyes. "Well," said John, smiling at her gently, "if you don't want to be rich, Amos, Lydia does. I'll give her the cottage here, the first fifty thousand I make off of Indian pine lands." "I swan," exclaimed Amos, "if you do that, I'll buy a cow and a pig and some chickens and I can pretty near make a living right here." "You're foolish, Amos. This isn't New England. This is the West. All you've got to do is to keep your nerve, and any one with sense can make a killing. Opportunity screams at you." "I guess she's always on my deaf side," said Amos. "When I grow up," said Lydia, suddenly, "I'm going to buy a ship and sail to Africa and explore the jungles." "I'll go with you, Lydia,", exclaimed Levine, "hanged if I don't sell my Indian lands for real money, and go right along with you." "Mr. Marshall says 'like Hell you'll get some Indian lands,'" mused the child. Both men exclaimed together, "What!" Lydia was confused but repeated her conversation with Marshall. "So that's the way the wind blows," said Levine. "You don't think for a minute there's a banker in town without one hand on the reservation," said Amos. "Lydia, you're old enough now not to repeat conversations you hear at home. Don't you ever tell anybody the things you hear me and Mr. Levine talk over. Understand?" sharply. "Yes, Daddy," murmured Lydia, flushing painfully. "You don't have to jaw the child that way, Amos." Levine's voice was impatient. "Just explain things to her. Why do you want to humiliate her?" Amos gave a short laugh. "Takes a bachelor to bring up kids. Run along to bed, Lydia." "Lydia's not a kid. She's a grown-up lady in disguise," said Levine, catching her hand as she passed and drawing her to him. "Good night, young Lydia! If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger--" Lydia smiled through tear-dimmed eyes. "We'd travel!" she said. Cold weather set in early this year. Before Thanksgiving the lake was ice-locked for the winter. The garden was flinty, and on Thanksgiving Day, three inches of snow fell. The family rose in the dark. Amos, with his dinner pail, left the house an hour before Lydia and the sun was just flushing the brown tree tops when she waved good-by to little Patience, whose lovely little face against the window was the last thing she saw in the morning, the first thing she saw watching for her return in the dusk of the early winter evening. Amos, always a little moody and a little restless, since the children's mother had gone to her last sleep, grew more so as the end of the year approached. It was perhaps a week before Christmas on a Sunday afternoon that he called Lydia to him. Patience was having her nap and Lizzie had gone to call on Mrs. Norton.