Once more Lydia came to her feet.  “Oh, Mr. Levine,” she exclaimed, “don’t put all the blame on Billy!  Really, it’s my fault.  He wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t agreed that it was right.  And he would have stopped when he found that Dad and his father had taken full blood lands only—­why—­why, I said that if I could stand his showing that you had been—­crooked—­up there, I could stand anything and I made him go on.”

She stopped with a little break in her voice that was not unlike a sob.  And for the first time there spread over John Levine’s face a blush, so dark, so agonizing, that the men about him turned their eyes away.  With a little groan, he sat down.  Lydia clasped her hands.

“Oh, it is all my fault,” she repeated brokenly, “all the trouble that’s come to Lake City.”

Billy Norton jumped up.  “That’s blamed nonsense!” he began, when Smith interrupted him, impatiently.

“Be seated, Norton.”  Then, gently, to Lydia, “My dear, you mean that, knowing what an investigation would mean to the people you love, you backed young Norton in instigating one.  That you knew he would not go on without your backing?”

“Yes, sir,” faltered Lydia.

“Can you tell us why?” asked Elway, still more gently.

Lydia, whose cheeks were burning and whose eyes were deep with unshed tears, twisted her hands uncomfortably and looked at Billy.

“Go ahead, Lyd,” he said, reassuringly.

“Because it was right,” she said, finally.  “Because—­Ducit Amor Patriae—–­you know, because no matter whether the Indians were good or bad, we had made promises to them and they depended on us.”  She paused, struggling for words.

“I did it because I felt responsible to the country like my ancestors did, in the Civil War and in the Revolution, to—­to take care of America, to keep it clean, no matter how it hurt.  I—­I couldn’t be led by love of country and see my people doing something contemptible, something that the world would remember against us forever, and not try to stop it, no matter how it hurt.”

Trembling so that the ribbon at her throat quivered, she looked at the three commissioners, and sat down.

James cleared his throat.  “Mr. Dudley, did you know your daughter’s attitude when you undertook to get some pine lands?”

Amos pulled himself to his feet.  His first anger at Lydia had given way to a mixture of feelings.  Now, he swallowed once or twice and answered, “Of course, I knew she was sympathetic with the Indians, but I don’t know anything about the rest of it.”

The commissioners waited as though expecting Amos to go on.  He fumbled with his watch chain for a moment, staring out the window.  With his thin face, his high forehead and sparse hair, he never looked more like the picture of Daniel Webster than now.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m a New Englander and I’m frank to admit that I’ve wandered a long way from the old ideals, like most of the New Englanders in America.  But that isn’t saying, gentlemen, that I’m not—­not darned proud of Lydia!”