There was a little murmur through the room and Senator Elway smiled, a trifle sadly.  “Mr. Dudley,” he said, “we’re all proud of Lydia.  She’s made our unsavory task seem better worth while.”

“I suggest that we adjourn for lunch,” said Smith.  “Miss Dudley, you need not return.”

While her father paused to speak to Kent and Levine, Lydia made her escape.  She wanted more than anything in the world to be alone, but when she reached home, Ma Norton and Lizzie were waiting at the cottage, both of them half sick with anxiety.  They were not reassured by Lydia’s story of the morning session, although Ma said,

“Of course, it’s the disgrace of the thing that worries us.  Pa and Billy say all this commission can do is to present their evidence to Congress.  I’m not saying, of course, that you weren’t right plucky to take the stand you did, Lydia.  And I’m proud of Billy though he is bringing trouble on his poor father!”

Lydia spent the afternoon with Adam in the woods.  She expected John Levine to come home with her father to supper, and for the first time in her life, she did not want to meet her best loved friend.  But she might have spared herself this anxiety, for Amos came home alone.  Levine was busy, he said.

Amos was in a curiously subdued mood.  Whatever Lydia had expected of him, she had not expected the almost conciliatory attitude he took toward her.  It embarrassed her far more than recriminations would have.

“I do think, Lydia,” he said mildly, after they had discussed the morning session, “you should have told me what was going on.  But there, I suppose, I’d have raised Cain, if you had.”

“Is Mr. Levine very angry with me?” asked Lydia.

“He didn’t say.  I don’t see how he can be.  After all, the stuff was bound to come out, sooner or later.  He’s got something up his sleeve.  This experience’s done one thing.  It’s brought all the different factions together.  Disgrace loves company as well as misery.”

“I’m so worried about it all!” sighed Lydia.

“Kind of late in the day for you to worry,” sniffed Amos.  “I suppose Billy’s worrying too!  But there, I guess you two have put some saving grace into Lake City, in the commission’s eyes.  Of course, I’m going to give up any claim on those lands.”

Amos pulled at his pipe thoughtfully and looked at Lydia’s tired, wistful face complacently.  He did not tell her that the three commissioners had individually and collectively congratulated him on Lydia and their praise had been such that he felt that any disgrace he had suffered in connection with the Indian lands had been more than counteracted by Lydia’s performance.

To Lydia’s pain and disappointment, Levine did not come to the cottage before he returned to Washington, which he did the week following the hearing.  And then, all thought of her status with him was swallowed up in astonishment over the revelations that came out early in September when Dave Marshall and the Indian Agent were called before the commission.