"Well," he said, rising, "it's quite a walk back to the trolley. Perhaps I'd better be going."

Lydia rose with alacrity. "I'm—I'm glad you like the mahogany," she said awkwardly.

"Er—yes. So am I," returned Willis, making for the door as Amos groaned again. "Good night, Miss Dudley."

"Good night," said Lydia, and closing the door with a gasp of relief she dashed for the dining-room.

"Just when I'm trying to be refined and lady-like!" she wailed. Then she stopped.

"Lydia," roared Amos, "if you ever touch my chair again! Look at my shirt and pants!"

Lydia looked and from these to the chair, denuded of the two coats of varnish. "But you knew it wasn't dry," she protested.

"How could I remember?" cried Amos. "I just sat down a minute to put on my slippers you'd hid."

"I don't see why you couldn't have been quiet about it," Lydia half sobbed. "We were having such a nice time and all of a sudden it sounded like an Irish wake out here. It embarrassed Professor Willis so he went right home and I know he'll never come back."

"I should hope he wouldn't," retorted Amos. "Of course, what a college professor thinks is more important than my comfort. Why, that varnish went through my shirt to my skin. Liz, what are you laughing at?"

Lizzie had suppressed her laughter till she was weak. "At you, Amos! Till my dying day, I'll never forget how you looked prancing round the room with that chair glued to your back!"

"Oh, Daddy! It must have been funny!" cried Lydia, beginning to giggle.

Amos looked uncertainly at his two women folk, and then his lips twisted and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Lydia! Lydia!" he cried, "don't try to be elegant with any more of your callers! It's too hard on your poor old father!"

"I won't," replied Lydia. "He likes the mahogany, anyway. But he'll never come again," she added, with sudden gloom. "Not that I care, stiff old Harvard thing," and she patted Adam and went soberly to bed.

But Professor Willis did come again. Not so frequently, of course, as to compromise his dignity. An instructor who called on freshman girls was always laughed at. But several times during the winter and spring he appeared at the cottage, and talked with Lydia earnestly and intellectually. Nor did he always confine his calls to the evening.

One Sunday afternoon in March Amos was in town with John Levine, who was on one of his hurried visits home, when Billy Norton came over to the cottage.

Lydia, who was poring over "The Ring and the Book," saw at once that something was wrong.

"What's worrying you, Billy?" she asked.

"Lydia," he said, dropping into Amos' chair and folding his big arms, "you know my tract of land—the one I was going to buy from an Indian? I paid young Lone Wolf a ten dollar option on it while I looked round to see how I could raise enough to pay him a fair price. He's only a kid of seventeen and stone blind from trachoma. Well, yesterday I found that Marshall had bought it in. Of course, I didn't really think Lone Wolf knew what an option was, but Marshall and the Indian Agent and Levine and all the rest knew what I was trying to do, so I thought they'd keep their hands off."

"What a shame!" exclaimed Lydia.

"Yes," said Billy grimly, a certain tensity in his tones that made Lydia look at him more closely, "Yes, a shame. The way Marshall did it was this. He looked young Lone Wolf up and gave him a bag of candy. The Indians are crazy for candy. Then he told him to make his cross on a piece of paper. That that was a receipt that he was to keep and if he'd show it at the store whenever he wanted candy, he'd have all he wanted, for nothing. And he had two half-breeds witness it. What Marshall had done was to get Lone Wolf to sign a warranty deed, giving Marshall his pine land. The poor devil of an Indian didn't know it till yesterday when he showed me his 'receipt' in great glee. Of course, they'll swear he's a mixed blood."

Lydia was speechless with disgust for a moment, then she burst out, "Oh, I wish that reservation had never been heard of! It demoralizes every one who comes in contact with it."

"Lydia," said Billy, slowly, "I'm going to expose Marshall."

"What do you mean?" Lydia looked a little frightened.

"I mean that I'm going to show up his crooked deals with the Indians. I'm going to rip this reservation graft wide open. I'm not going to touch an acre of the land myself so I can go in with clean hands and I'm not going to forget that I came pretty close to being a skunk, myself."

"Oh, but, Billy!" cried Lydia. "There's John Levine and all our friends—oh, you can't do it!"

"Look here, Lydia," Billy's voice was stern, "are you for or against Indian graft?"

Lydia drew a long breath but was spared an immediate answer for there was a knock on the door and Kent came in, followed shortly by Professor Willis.

"Well," said Kent, after Lydia had settled them all comfortably, "I just left Charlie Jackson—poor old prune!"

"Oh, how is he?" asked Lydia eagerly, "and what is he doing?"

"He's pretty seedy," answered Kent. "He's been trying to keep the whites off the reservation by organizing the full bloods to stand against the half-breeds. But after a year of trying he's given up hope. The full bloods are fatalists, you know, and Charlie has gone back to it himself."

"Charlie Jackson is an old schoolmate of ours." Lydia turned to Willis and gave him a rapid sketch of Charlie's life. The Harvard man was deeply interested.

"Can't you get him back to his work with the doctor?" he asked Kent.

Kent shook his head. "The only way to keep an Indian from reverting is to put him where he never can see his people or the reservation. Charlie's given up. He's drinking a little."

"And still you folks will keep on, stealing the reservation!" exclaimed Billy.

Kent gave Billy a grin, half irritated, half whimsical. "I know it's Sunday, old man, but don't let's have a sermon. You're a farmer, Bill, anyhow, no matter what else you try to be."

"Thank God for that," laughed Billy.

"My word!" ejaculated Willis. "What a country! You spout the classics on week days and on holidays you steal from the aborigines!"

"Oh, here, draw it mild, Professor!" growled Kent.

"Well, but it's true," exclaimed Lydia. "Where's our old New England sense of fairness?"

"That's good too," said Kent. "Who was brisker than our forefathers at killing redskins?"

"Altogether a different case," returned the Harvard man. "Our forefathers killed in self-defense. You folks are killing out of wanton greed."

"That's the point, exactly," said Billy.

Kent gave his cheerful grin. "Call it what you please," he laughed. "As long as the whites will have the land, I'm going to get my share."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Lydia looked from Billy to Kent, and back again. Kent was by far the handsomer of the two. He had kept the brilliant color and the charming glow in his eyes that had belonged to his boyhood. He dressed well, and sat now, knees crossed, hands clasped behind his head, with easy grace. Billy was a six-footer, larger than Kent and inclined to be raw-boned. His mouth was humorous and sensitive, his gray eyes were searching.

"Let's not talk about it," Lydia said. "Let's go out in the kitchen and pop corn and make candy." This with a little questioning glance at the professor of Shakespeare. He, however, rose with alacrity, and the rest of the afternoon passed without friction. Willis developed a positive passion for making popcorn balls and he left with Kent at dusk proudly bearing off a bag of the results of his labors.

Billy stayed after the rest and helped Lydia to clean up the dishes. Kent would never have thought of this, Lydia said to herself with a vague pang. When they had finished Billy gravely took Lydia's coat from the hook and said, "Come, woman, and walk in the gloaming with your humble servant."

Lydia giggled and obeyed. There was still snow, in the hollows but the road was clear and frozen hard. They walked briskly till a rise in the road gave them a view of the lake and a scarlet rift in the sky where the sun had sunk in a bank of clouds.

"Now, Lydia," said Billy, "answer my question. Are you for or against Indian graft?"

"I just won't take sides," announced Lydia, obstinately.

Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Lydia," he said. "You have to take sides! You can't escape it. You mean too much to too many of us men. You've got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like this. It means too much to America for you not to. Your influence counts, in that way if in no other, don't you see."

Lydia's throat tightened. "I won't take sides against Mr. Levine," she repeated.

"Do you mean that you don't want me to expose Marshall?" asked Billy.

"You've no right to ask me that." Lydia's voice was cross.

"But I have. Lydia, though you don't want it, my life is yours. No matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren't we, friends in the deepest sense of the word,—aren't we, Lydia?"

Lydia stared at Billy in silence. Perhaps it was the glow from the west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was nothing searching in them now. There was a depth and loyalty in them and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John Levine looked at her. A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind fluttered Billy's hair.

Friendship! Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia's heart.

"Yes, we are friends. Billy," she said slowly. "But oh, Billy, don't make me decide that!"

"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're going to be worth anything to the world."

"But if the problems really meant anything to you," protested Lydia, "you wouldn't depend on some girl to shove you into them."

"But men do. They are built that way. Not some girl but the girl. Every great cause was fought for some woman! Oh, Lydia, Lydia!"

"Billy," Lydia looked away from him to the lake, "you'll have to let me think about it. You see, it's deciding my attitude toward all my friends, even toward Dad. And I hadn't intended ever to decide."

"And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?"

"I'll tell you as soon as I decide," she answered.

Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper. It seemed to Lydia that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening. After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while the two men smoked. Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old, wheezed with his head baking under the stove. Levine did not talk of the Indians, to Lydia's relief, but of Washington politics. As the evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia.

"What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?"

"Browning—'The Ring and the Book,'" replied Lydia.

John shook his head. "Really grown up, aren't you, Lydia? Do you enjoy being a young lady?"

"Yes, I do, only I miss the old days when I saw so much of you."

"Do you, my dear?" asked Levine, eagerly. "In what ways do you miss me?"

"Oh, every way! No one will ever understand me as you do."

"Oh, I don't know. There are Billy and Kent."

Lydia shook her head, though Billy's face in the moonlight after the graduation party, returned unexpectedly to her memory as she did so.

"There'll never be any one like you." Then moved by a sudden impulse she leaned toward him and said, "No matter what happens, you will always know that I love you, won't you, Mr. Levine?"

John looked at the wistful face, keenly. "Why, what could happen, young Lydia?"

"Oh, lots of things! I'm grown up now and—and I have to make decisions about the rightness and the wrongness of things. But no matter what I decide, nothing can change my love for you."

"Lydia, come here," said Levine, abruptly.

In the old way, Lydia came to his side and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair. For a moment they sat in silence, his arm about her, her cheek against his hair, staring into the glowing stove.

"When you were just a little tot," said Levine at last, "you were full of gumption and did your own thinking. And I've been glad to see you keep the habit. Always make your own decisions, dear. Don't let me or any one else decide matters of conscience for you. 'To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' Eh, little girl?"

He rose as he heard Amos coming in the back door, and with his hand under Lydia's chin, he looked long and earnestly into her eyes. Then as Billy had done earlier in the evening, he sighed, "Oh, Lydia! Lydia!" and turned away.



CHAPTER XV

THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

"Nothing is so proud or so brave as the young pine when it first tops the rest of the forest."—The Murmuring Pine.

For several days Lydia was unhappy and absent-minded. At first, in her thoughts she was inclined to blame Billy for forcing this turmoil of mind on her. But, a little later, she admitted to herself that for years, something within her had been demanding that she take a stand on the Indian question something to which Charlie Jackson and Billy had appealed, something which Kent and John Levine had ignored. Yet neither Charlie nor Billy had really forced her to a decision.

Lydia was grown up. All her young life she had carried the responsibilities and had faced the home tragedies that come usually only to grown folk. Now, in her young womanhood it was natural and inevitable that she should turn to the larger responsibilities of the living world about her in order to satisfy the larger needs of her maturity.

Yet, still old affection fought with new clarity of vision. Old loyalty quarreled with new understanding. Bit by bit she went over her thinking life, beginning with her first recollection of Charlie Jackson in the class in Civil Government, and all that was feminine and blind devotion in her fought desperately with all that education and her civic-minded forefathers had given her.

Coming home from her last recitation, one mild afternoon, she stopped at the gate and looked up into the pine tree. Its scent carried her back to the cloistered wood on the reservation and once more the desire for the soil was on her. She leaned against the giant tree trunk and looked out over the lake, steel blue and cold in the March sunshine. And there with the lowing of the Norton herds and the hoarse call of the crows mingling with the soft voice of the pine and the lapping of the lake, she made her decision. For clearly as though the pine had put it into words, something said to Lydia that it was not her business to decide whether or not the Indians deserved to live. It was her business to recognize that in their method of killing the Indians, the whites had been utterly dishonorable. That her refusing to take a stand could not exonerate them. History would not fail to record the black fact against her race that, a free people, the boasted vanguard of human liberty, Americans had first made a race dependent, then by fraud and faithlessness, by cruelty and debauchery, were utterly destroying it. And finally, that by closing her eyes to the facts, because of her love for Levine, she was herself sharing the general taint.

It was Lydia's first acknowledgment of her responsibility to America, and it left her a little breathless and trembling. She turned back to the road and made her way swiftly to the Norton place. She did not go into the house, but down the lane where she could see Billy putting up the bars after the cattle. He waited for her, leaning against the rails.

"Billy," she said, panting, her cheeks bright and her yellow hair blowing, "I'm against the Indian grafting."

Billy put out his hand, solemnly, and the two shook hands. For all Billy was four years older than Lydia, they both were very, very young. So young that they believed that they could fight single-handed the whole world of intrigue and greed in which their little community was set. So young that they trembled and were filled with awe at the vast importance of their own dreams. And yet, futile as they may seem, it is on young decisions such as these that the race creeps upward!

"What are you going to do, Billy?" asked Lydia.

"I'm going to get a government investigation started, somehow," he replied. "It'll take time, but I'll get it."

Lydia looked at him admiringly, then she shivered a little. "I hate to think of it, but I'll stand by you, Billy, whatever you do."

"I'm going into ex-Senator Alvord's law office this June. I'll bet he'll help. He's so sore at Levine. It'll be lovely muckraking, Lyd!"

"I hate to think of it," she said unsteadily. "Lizzie is miserable, to-day. Will you tell your mother, Billy, and ask her to come over to see her this evening? I mustn't stop any longer now."

Poor old Lizzie was miserable, indeed. For years, she had struggled against rheumatism, but now it had bound her, hand and foot. Ma Norton came over in the evening. Lizzie was in bed shivering and flushed and moaning with pain.

"Now, don't bother about me," she insisted. "Lydia's threatening to stay home to-morrow, and I tell you I won't have it," and the poor old soul began to cry weakly.

Ma pulled the covers over the shaking shoulders. "If I were you, Lizzie, I'd think about getting well and let Lydia do what she thinks best. A day or so out of school isn't going to count in the long run with a young thing like her."

She waited till Lizzie slept, then she told Lydia and Amos that Dr. Fulton had better be called, and Amos with a worried air, started for town at once.

Dr. Fulton shook his head and sighed.

"She's in for a run of rheumatic fever. Get some extra hot water bottles and make up your mind for a long siege, Lydia."

And it was a long siege. Six weeks of agony for Lizzie, of nursing and housework and worrying for Lydia. Ma Norton and the neighbors gave what time they could, but the brunt, of course, fell on Lydia. She fretted most about her college work. Sitting by Lizzie's bed, when the old lady dozed in her brief respites from pain, she tried to carry on her lessons alone, but with indifferent success. She was too tired to concentrate her mind. Trigonometry rapidly became a hopeless tangle to her; Ancient History a stupid jumble of unrelated dates. And most of all, as the days went by, she felt the indifference of University folk. Nobody cared that she had dropped out, it seemed to her.

Billy called every evening on his way home to supper. He filled water buckets, chopped wood and fed the chickens, that Amos might be free to take Lydia's place. John Levine sat up two or three nights a week. Kent came out once a week, with a cheery word and a basket of fruit. And at frequent intervals, the Marshall surrey stopped at the gate and Elviry or Dave appeared with some of Elviry's delicious cookery for Lydia and Amos.

One afternoon in April when Lizzie had at last taken a turn for the better, Lydia elected to clean the kitchen floor. She was down on her hands and knees scrubbing when there came a soft tap on the open door. She looked up. Professor Willis was standing on the steps.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia, rising with burning cheeks.

"I—I couldn't make any one hear at the front door. I came to see why you didn't come to class."

Lydia was wearing a faded and outgrown blue gingham. Her face was flushed but there were black rings round her eyes, and she was too tired to be polite.

"I think it's just awful for you to come on me, scrubbing floors! You should have knocked at the front door, till I heard," she said, crossly.

The Harvard man looked at her seriously. "I really never saw a girl playing golf look as pretty as you do, scrubbing floors. May I come in?"

He did not wait for an invitation but stepped over the pail and brush to the chair beside the table. An open book lay on the chair. He picked it up. "'Ancient Rome,'" he read.

"I'm trying to keep up." Lydia was drying her red hands on the roller towel. Her shoulders drooped despondently. "What's the use of trying to be a lady," she said, suddenly, "when you have to fight poverty like this! You oughtn't to have come on me this way!"

The Harvard man looked from the immaculate kitchen to the slender girl, with her fine head, and then at the book in his hand.

"Of course, I've never known a girl like you. But I should imagine that eventually you'll achieve something finer out of your poverty than the other girls at the University will out of their golf and tennis. I don't fancy that our New England mothers were ashamed of scrubbing floors."

He looked at her with a smile on his pale face. Suddenly Lydia smiled in return. "Sit down while I make us some tea," she said. "I'll never try to play lady with you again."

Willis stayed with her an hour, sitting in the kitchen where the open door showed the turquoise lake through a gray-green net of swelling tree buds. He did not leave till Lizzie wakened. He cleared up the tangle in Lydia's trigonometry for her and went over the lost lessons in Shakespeare, all the while with a vague lump in his throat over the wistful eagerness in the blue eyes opposite his, over the thin, red, watersoaked hands that turned the leaves of the books.

When Billy called that evening he found Lydia more cheerful than she had been in weeks. When she told him of her caller he looked at her thoughtfully and growled, "I hope he chokes," and not another word did he say while he finished Amos' chores.

Professor Willis came out regularly after this and when Lydia returned to class work in May, she was able to work creditably through the reviews then taking place and in June to pass the examinations.

During all this time she said nothing to Billy about his muckraking campaign. In spite of her high resolves she half hoped he had given it up. But she did not know Billy as well as she thought she did. He finished his law course in June and entered ex-Senator Alvord's office as he had planned. There was another election in the fall and John Levine was returned to Congress, this time almost without a struggle. So many of the voters of the community were profiting by the alienating of the mixed-blood pines that it would have been blatant hypocrisy on the part of Republicans as well as Democrats to have opposed him. In fact, thanks to Levine, the town had entered on a period of unprecedented prosperity. The college itself had purchased for a song a section of land to be used as an agricultural experiment station.

Like a bomb, then, late in December fell the news that the Indian Commissioner had been called before a senate committee to answer questions regarding the relations of Lake City to the reservation. While following close on the heels of this announcement came word that a congressional commission of three had been appointed to sit at Lake City to investigate Indian matters.

"Billy, how did you do it?" asked Lydia, in consternation. He had overtaken her one bitter cold January afternoon, on her way home from college.

"I didn't do much," said Billy. "I just got affidavits, dozens of them, showing frauds, and gave them to Senator Alvord. He has a lot of influence among the Democratic senators and is a personal friend of the President. It was a wonderful chance, he saw, to hurt the Republicans, even though there were Democrats implicated. The Indian Commissioner and Levine are both Republicans, you know. Then, when he finally got the hearing before the Senate Committee, he smuggled Charlie Jackson and Susie and old Chief Wolf down there. Nobody here knows that."

Lydia's lips were set tightly as she plodded along the snowy road.

"Billy," she said, finally, "are you doing this to get even with Dave Marshall?"

"Lydia!" cried Billy, catching her arm and forcing her to stop and face him. "Don't you know me better than that? Don't you?"

"Then why are you doing it?" demanded Lydia.

"I'm doing it because I'm ashamed of what New Englanders have done with their heritage. And I'm doing it for you. To make a name for you. Look at me. No, not at the lake, into my eyes. You are going to marry me, some day, Lydia."

"I'm not," said Lydia flatly.

Billy laughed. "You can't help yourself, honey. It's fate for both of us. Come along home! You're shivering."

"When you talk that way, I hate you!" exclaimed Lydia, but Billy only laughed again.

Amos at first was furious when he heard of the investigation. He, with every one else in town, was eager to know who had started the trouble.

"Some sorehead," said Amos, "who couldn't get all the land he wanted, I'll bet. And a sweet time the commission will have. Why, they'll have to dig into the private history of every one in Lake City. It'll ruin Levine! Oh, pshaw! No, it won't either! He can get everything whitewashed. That's the way American investigations always end!"

But Levine could not get everything whitewashed. The group of three commissioners sat for months and in that time they exposed to the burning sun of publicity the muck of thievery and dishonor on which Lake City's placid beauty was built.

By some strange turn of fortune, Congress had chosen three honest men for this unsavory task, three men grimly and unswervingly determined to see the matter through. They sat in rooms in the post-office building. In and out of the building day after day passed the Indians to face the sullen and unwilling whites summoned to hear and answer what these Indians had to say of them. Charlie Jackson acted as interpreter. Lydia saw him once or twice on the street when he nodded coolly. He had dropped his white associates completely.

The local papers refused to report the commission's session. But papers outside the State were voracious for the news and little by little tales were published to the world that made Lake City citizens when out of the city, hesitate to confess the name of their home town.

The leading trustee of the Methodist Church was found to have married a squaw in order to get her pine and her pitiful Government allowance. His white wife and children left him when this was proved to them, and it was proved only when the starving squaw and her starving children were finally acknowledged by the trustee before the commission.

The Methodists were held up to scorn for a few months until a prominent Presbyterian who was the leading grocer in town was found to have supplied the Indian Agent for years with tainted groceries for the Indians.

The most popular dentist in town filled teeth for the Indians whenever they received their allowances. His method of filling was simple. He drove empty copper cartridge caps over the teeth. These when burnished made a handsome showing until gangrene set in. The afflicted Indians were then turned over to a popular young doctor of Lake City who took the next year's allowance from the bewildered patients.

Marriage after marriage of squaws with Lake City citizens was unearthed, most of these same citizens also having a white family. Hundreds of tracts of lands that had been obtained by stealing or by fraud from full bloods were listed. Bags of candy, bits of jewelry, bolts of cotton had been exchanged for pine worth thousands of dollars.

It was a nerve-racking period for Lake City. Whether purposely or not, the net did not begin to close round John Levine till toward the end of the hearing. Nor did Levine come home until late in the summer, when the commission had been sitting for some months.

In spite of a sense of apprehension that would not lift, the year was a happy one for Lydia. In the first place, she went to three college dancing parties during the year. The adaptability of the graduation gown was wonderful and although Lydia knew that she was only a little frump compared with the other girls, Billy, who took her each time, always wore the dress suit! So she shone happily in reflected elegance.

In the second place, three men called on her regularly—Billy, Kent and Professor Willis.

In the third place, Kent asked her to go with him to the last party and, to Lydia's mind, a notable conversation took place at that time.

"Thanks, Kent," said Lydia, carelessly, "but I'm going with Billy."

"Billy! Always Billy!" snorted Kent. "Why, you and I were friends before we ever heard of Billy!"

"Yes," returned Lydia calmly, "and in all these years this is the first time you've asked me to go to a party. I've often wondered why."

Kent moved uncomfortably. "Pshaw, Lyd, you know I always went with some girl I was having a crush on—that was why."

"And don't you ever ask a girl to go to a party unless you have a crush on her?" asked Lydia, mischievously.

Kent gave her a clear look. "No!" he replied.

Lydia flushed, then she said, slowly, "That's only half true, Kent. You've always liked me as I have you. But you've always been ashamed of my clothes. I don't blame you a bit, but you can imagine how I feel about Billy, who's taken me, clothes or no clothes."

It was Kent's turn to flush and he did so to such an extent that Lydia was sorry for him while she waited for him to answer.

"Hang it, Lyd, I've been an infernal cad, that's all!"

"And," Lydia went on, mercilessly, "I've got nothing to wear now but the same old graduating dress. I suppose you were hoping for better things?"

"Stop it!" Kent shouted. "I deserve it, but I'm not going to take it. I'm asking you for just one reason and that is, I've waked up to the fact that you're the finest girl in the world. No one can hold a candle to you."

There was a sudden lilt in Lydia's voice that did not escape Kent as she answered laughingly, "Well, if you feel the same after seeing Margery this summer, I'll be glad to go to one of the hops next fall with you, and thank you, deeply, Mr. Moulton."

"All right," said Kent, soberly. "The first hop next fall is mine and as many more as I can get."

It was late in the spring and after the conversation with Kent, that it began to be rumored about town that ex-Senator Alvord's office was at the bottom of the Indian investigation. Billy had been called in to testify and had shown an uncanny amount of knowledge of fraudulent land deals and Alvord had corroborated many of his statements.

Kent accused Billy of this openly, one Sunday afternoon at Lydia's. They were sitting on the lake shore, for the day was parching hot. Both the young men were in flannels and hatless, and lolled on the grass at Lydia's feet, as she sat with her back against a tree. She noticed how Kent was all grace, and ease, while Billy, whose face had lately become thinner, was all gaunt angles.

"I'm willing to take the blame, if necessary," said Billy.

Kent sat up with sudden energy. "Look here, if it once got round town that you're the father of this, you'll be run out of Lake City."

Billy laughed. "Oh, no I won't! All you respectable citizens have got too many troubles of your own."

"Nice thing to do to your friends and neighbors, Bill," Kent went on, excitement growing in his voice as he realized the import of Billy's acknowledgment. "What the deuce did you do it for?"

Billy shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Kent appealed to Lydia. "Would you have gone to parties with him if you'd known what he was doing to his town, Lyd?"

Billy was still lying on both elbows, industriously herding a pair of ants. He did not look up at Lydia as she stared at his massive blond head.

"Kent, I knew it," said Lydia, after a pause.

"You knew it! You let a lot of sickly sentimentality ruin Lake City in the eyes of the world? Not only that. Think what's coming to John Levine! Think what's coming to me, though I've done little enough!"

"Then I'm glad it came to stop you; while you'd still done little!" cried Lydia.

"Nonsense!" snapped Kent. "Of course, you don't expect anything but gush from a girl about the Indians. But I don't see what you get out of it, Bill. Who's paying you? Are you going to run for president on the purity ticket?"

"There's no use in my trying to tell you why I did it," grunted Billy.

"No, there isn't," agreed Kent. "But I'll tell you this much. Bill, you and I break right here and now. I've no use for a sneak."

Again Billy shrugged his shoulders. Lydia looked at the two in despair, then she smiled and cried, "Oh, there's Margery! Isn't she lovely!"

It was Margery, just home from boarding-school, where she gaily announced as she shook hands she had been "finally finished."

"Though," she added. "Daddy wants to pack me right off again because of this silly investigation. As if I wanted to miss the fun of viewing all our best family skeletons!"

"Margery," cried Lydia, quickly, "you're so beautiful that you're simply above envy. What a duck of a dress!"

"Isn't it!" agreed Margery. "Kent, do get me a chair. I'll spoil all my ruffles on the grass. Well! Here I am! And what were you all discussing so solemnly when I interrupted?"

"Indian graft!" said Billy, laconically.

"Isn't it awful! And isn't it funny! You know, I was actually proud that I lived in Lake City. The girls used to point me out in school to visitors."

Margery, exquisite in her dainty gown, her wonderful black eyes gleaming with fun, as a sample of Lake City dishonesty appealed to the sense of humor of her audience and they all laughed, though Lydia felt her throat tighten strangely as she did so,—Margery, made exquisite on the money of blind squaws and papooses that froze to death!

"Daddy is all worked up, though I told him they certainly hadn't done anything much to him, so far, and I'd feel real neglected if they didn't find he had an Indian wife up his sleeve," Margery went on. "Oh, Billy, by the way. Daddy says he thinks Senator Alvord started the whole thing. Did he?"

"Yes, and I helped," replied Billy shortly.

"Well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself," cried Margery, airily. "Don't you, Lydia?"

"No, I don't, I'm proud of him, though I'm scared to death," said Lydia. "Things are so much worse than I thought they'd be."

"Well, I just tell you, Billy Norton," there was a sudden shrill note in Margery's voice, "if anything really horrid is unearthed about Daddy, I'll never speak to you again. Would you, Kent?"

"I don't intend to anyhow," replied Kent, coolly. "How'd you come out, Marg?"

"I walked from the trolley. I'd no idea it was so hot."

"Let me take you home in my toot-toot."

"But I just got here," protested Margery.

"It's now or never," said Kent, rising, "I've got to run along."

"Oh, if it's that serious!" Margery took Kent's arm. "By-by, Lydia! Come over and see my new dresses."

After they were gone, Billy sat up and looked at Lydia. Neither spoke for a few moments. The sun was sinking and all the world was enveloped in a crimson dust. There had been a drought now for six weeks. Even Amos' garden was languishing.

"Lydia," said Billy, "I'm going to quit. You know I've worked with Charlie Jackson right along."

"Quit? But Billy, why I—I didn't think you minded Kent and Margery that much!"

"I don't mind them at all. But, Lydia, I found yesterday my father got one hundred and twenty acres from a ten-year-old full-blood boy for five dollars and a bicycle. Last week Charlie unearthed a full-blood squaw from whom your father had gotten two hundred and forty acres for an old sewing machine and twenty-five dollars. I've done so much for the Indians and Charlie is so fond of you that he'll shut these Indians up, but I can't go on, after that, of course."

Lydia was motionless. Over the house top, the great branches of the pine were turned to flames. The long drawn notes of a locust sounded above the steady drone of the crickets. Lydia had a curiously old feeling.

"I can't go on, Lydia," Billy repeated. "My fine old father and dear old Amos! I can't."

"Yes, you'll go on, Billy," Lydia's voice was very low. "After I faced what would come to John Levine through this, I can face anything."

Billy gave a little groan and bowed his head on Lydia's knee. Suddenly she felt years older than Billy. She smoothed his tumbled blond hair.

"Go on, Billy. Our ancestors left England for conscience' sake. And our grandfathers both laid down their lives for the Union."

Lydia ended with a little gulp of embarrassment. Billy caught her hand and sat up, looking eagerly through the gloaming at her face.

"I told you all the battles of the world were fought for a woman," he said. "Dear, I'll go on, though it'll break mother's heart."

"It won't break her heart," said Lydia. "Women's hearts don't break over that sort of thing."

"Lydia!" called Amos from the doorway, "aren't you going to give me any supper to-night?"

"Lord, it's two hours past milking time!" groaned Billy, and he started on a dog-trot for home.



CHAPTER XVI

DUCIT AMOR PATRIAE

"The same soil that nourishes the Indian and the white, nourishes me. Yet they do not know that thus we are blood brothers."—The Murmuring Pine.

It was the last week in August when John Levine was summoned before the commission. Lydia and Amos were summoned with him.

Lydia was frightened, Amos was irritable and sullen by turns after the summons finally came. They were due at the hearing at nine o'clock and arrived a little late. Amos had refused to be hurried.

The room in which the hearing was held was big and cool, with a heavily carpeted floor and walls lined with black walnut bookcases. There were two long tables at one end of the room behind one of which sat the three commissioners. At the other table were the official stenographers and Charlie Jackson. Before the tables were chairs and here were John Levine and Kent, Pa Norton, and Billy, old Susie and a younger squaw, with several bucks.

Lydia and her father dropped into empty seats and Lydia gave a little sigh of relief when Levine caught her eye across the room and smiled at her. She looked at the commissioners curiously. They were talking in undertones to one another and she thought that they all looked tired and harassed. She knew them fairly well from the many newspaper pictures she had seen of them. The fat gentleman, with penetrating blue eyes and a clean-shaven face, was Senator Smith of Texas. The roly-poly man, with black eyes and a grizzled beard, was Senator Elway of Maine, and the tall, smooth-shaven man with red hair was Senator James of New York.

"Mr. Levine," said Senator Smith, suddenly, "we are sorry to have to put you to this inconvenience. Believe us, we find our task no more savory than you do."

Levine gave his slow, sardonic grin. "Don't apologize, gentlemen. Only make the ordeal as short as you can."

"We have done that," said Elway. "We found that you had carried on so many—er—transactions that we finally decided to choose three or four sample cases and let our case stand on those. First, we have found that full bloods have been repeatedly sworn as mixed bloods, in order that their lands might be alienated. A curious idea, Mr. Levine, to attempt to legalize an illegality by false swearing. Jackson, call Crippled Bear."

Charlie, who had been sitting with arms folded, his somber eyes on Lydia, spoke quickly to one of the bucks, who rose and took the empty chair by Charlie.

He began to talk at once, Charlie interpreting slowly and carefully.

"I am a mixed blood. I speak English pretty well when I am with only one white. With so many, my English goes. Many moons ago the man Levine found me drunk in the snow. He picked me up and kept me in his house over night. When I was sober, he fed me. Then he made this plan. I was to gather half a dozen half-breeds together, he could trust. In the spring he would come up to the reservation and talk to us. I did this and he came. We were very hungry when he met us in the woods and he gave us food and money. Then he told us he was going to get the big fathers at Washington to let us sell our pines so we could always have money and food. Never be hungry any more—never."

Charlie's voice was husky as he said this and he looked at Levine with his teeth bared, like a wolf, Lydia thought.

"Then he said while he was getting that done, he would pay us a little every month to go through the woods and chop down the best trees. The Big Father will let whites get 'dead and down' timber out of Indian woods, he said. But not let whites cut any. So we say yes, and though full bloods are very mad when we cut down big trees, we do it. For many moons we do it and in winter, white men haul it to sawmills.

"Every little while, Levine comes up there and we have a council and tell him everything that happens. All about things Marshall and other whites do. And he pays us always. Then he tells us that the Big Father will let mixed bloods sell their pine lands but not full bloods. So then we agree when he wants any full blood land to swear that any full blood is mixed. And we have done this now, perhaps twenty times."

The mixed blood and Charlie paused, and Levine leaned forward. "Crippled Bear," he said, "why did you tell all this?"

Crippled Bear Jerked a swarthy thumb at Billy Norton. "That white," he answered in English, "tell me if I tell truth, maybe I get back all lands and pine. I like that, you un'stand—for then I sell 'em again, un'stand."

A little ripple of laughter went through the room, though John himself did not smile. He looked at young Norton with his black eyes half closed.

Mr. Smith took up a paper. "I have here, Mr. Levine, a statement of your dealings with the Lake City Lumber Company. You have had sawed by them during the past six or eight years millions of feet of pine lumber. I find that you are holding Indian lands in the name of Lydia Dudley and her father, Amos Dudley, these lands legally belonging to full bloods. Amos Dudley is also the purchaser of land from full bloods, as is William Norton, Senior, through you."

Levine rose quickly. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "surely you can find enough counts against me without including Miss Dudley, who has never heard of the matters you mention."

Commissioner James spoke for the first time. "Suppose we go on with the witnesses before we open any discussion with Mr. Levine. Jackson, what have these squaws to tell? Or first, what about the other bucks?"

When Charlie had called the last of these Levine spoke, "I'd like to call the Government Roll-maker, Mr. Hardy."

A small man, who had slipped into the room unnoticed during the proceedings, came forward.

"What is your business, Mr. Hardy?" asked Levine.

"I am sent here by the Indian office to make a Roll of the Indians on this reservation, in the attempt to discover which are full and which mixed bloods."

"Do you find your task difficult, Mr. Hardy?" Levine's voice was whimsical.

"Very! The Government allows a man to claim his Indian rights when he has as little as one sixty-fourth of Indian blood in his veins. On the other hand, the older Indians are deadly ashamed of white blood in their veins and hate to admit it."

"Mr. Hardy, you have your Rolls with you? Yes? Well, tell me the blood status of each of these witnesses."

The room was breathless while the little Roll-maker ran through his list. According to this not one of the witnesses against Levine was a full blood nor one of the Indians from whom he had taken land. Even old Susie and Charlie's sister, he stated, had white blood in their veins.

"It's a lie!" shouted Charlie. "This man Hardy is paid by Levine!"

"Gently, Jackson!" said Senator James. "Mr. Levine, do you wish to call more witnesses?"

"Not for the present," replied John. "Let Jackson go on."

Charlie called old Susie. And old Susie, waving aside any attempts on Charlie's part to help, told of the death of her daughter from starvation and cold, this same daughter having sold her pines to Levine for a five-dollar bill and a dollar watch. She held out the watch toward Levine in one trembling old hand.

"I find this in dress, when she dead. She strong. It take her many days to die. I old. I pray Great Spirit take me. No! I starve! I freeze! I no can die. She young. She have little baby. She die."

Suddenly, she flung the watch at Levine's feet and sank trembling into her chair.

There was silence for a moment. In at the open window came the rumble of a street-car. Levine cleared his throat.

"All this is dramatic, of course, but doesn't make me the murderer of the squaw."

"No! but you killed my father!" shouted Charlie Jackson. And rising, he hurled forth the story he had told Lydia, years before. Lydia sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes fastened in horror on Charlie's face. A great actor had been lost in creating Charlie an Indian. He pictured his father's death, his sister's two attempts at revenge with a vividness and power that held even Levine spell-bound. It seemed to Lydia that the noose was fastened closer round John's neck with every word that was uttered.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Stop, Charlie! Stop!" she screamed. "You shan't say any more!"

Senator Elway rapped on the table. "You're out of order, Miss Dudley," he exclaimed, sharply.

Lydia had forgotten to be embarrassed. "I can't help it if I am," she insisted, "I won't have Charlie Jackson picturing Mr. Levine as a fiend, while I have a tongue to speak with. I know how bad the Indian matters are. Nobody's worried about it more than I have. But Mr. Levine's not a murderer. He couldn't be."

The three commissioners had looked up at Lydia with a scowl when she had interrupted Charlie. Now the scowl, as they watched her flushed face, gave way to arched eyebrows and a little smile, that was reflected on every face in the room except Charlie Jackson's.

"Lydia, you keep out of this," he shouted. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I do too!" stormed Lydia. "I—"

"Order! Let Jackson finish, Miss Dudley," said Senator Smith.

"I can't let him finish," cried Lydia, "until I tell you about Mr. Levine. He's been as much to me as my own father ever since my mother died when I was a little girl. He's understood me as only my own mother could, hasn't he, Daddy!"

Amos nodded, with a little apologetic glance at the commissioners. Levine's eyes were fastened on Lydia's face with an expression that was as sweet as it was fathomless. Charlie Jackson stood biting his nails and waiting, his affection for Lydia holding in abeyance his frenzied loyalty to his father.

"You think he could murder when he could hold a little girl on his knees and comfort her for the death of her little sister, when he taught her how to find God, when—oh, I know he's robbed the Indians—so has my own father, it seems, and so has Pa Norton, and so has Kent, and all of them are dear people. They've all been wrong. But think of the temptation, Mr. Commissioner! Supposing you were poor and the wonderful pines lay up there, so easy to take."

Senator Elway would have interrupted, but Senator James laid a hand on his arm. "It's all informal, let her have her say," he whispered. "It's the first bright spot in all the weeks of the hearing."

"Did you ever feel land hunger yourself," Lydia went on eagerly, "to look at the rows and rows of pine and think what it would mean to own them, forever! It's the queerest, strongest hunger in the world. I know, because I've had it. Honestly, I have, as strongly as any one here—only—I knew Charlie Jackson and this awful tragedy of his and I knew his eyes would haunt me if I took Indian lands."

"You're covering a good deal of ground and getting away from the specific case, Miss Dudley," said, Smith. "Of course, what you say doesn't exonerate Mr. Levine. On the other hand, Jackson has no means of proving him accessory to the murder of his father. We've threshed that out with Jackson before. What you say of Mr. Levine's character is interesting but there remains the fact that he has been proceeding fraudulently for years in his relations to the Indian lands. You yourself don't pretend to justify your acts, do you, Mr. Levine?"

Lydia sat down and Levine slowly rose and looked thoughtfully out of the window. "The legality or illegality of the matter has nothing to do with the broader ethics of the case, though I think you will find, gentlemen, that my acts are protected by law," he said. "The virgin land lies there, inhabited by a degenerate race, whose one hope of salvation lay in amalgamation with the white race. An ignorant government, when land was plenty and the tribe was larger, placed certain restrictions on the reservation. When land became scarce, and the tribe dwindled to a handful, those restrictions became wrong. It was inevitable that the whites should override them. Knowing that the ethics of my acts and those of other people would be questioned, I went to Congress to get these restrictions removed. If another two years could have elapsed, before these investigations had been begun, the fair name of Lake City never would have been smirched." Levine's hand on the back of his chair tightened as he looked directly at Billy Norton.

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!"

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.

Dave Marshall was the owner of the Last Chance! The Last Chance where "hussies" lay in wait like vultures for the Indian youths, took their government allowances, took their ancient Indian decency, and cast them forth to pollute their tribe with drink and disease. The Last Chance! The headquarters for the illegal selling of whisky to Indians. Where Indians were taught to evade the law, to carry whisky into the reservation and where in turn the bounty for their arrest was pledged to Marshall. The Last Chance, the main source of Dave Marshall's wealth!

Even Lake City was horrified by these revelations. People began to remove their money from his bank and for a time a run was threatened, then Dave resigned as president and the run was stayed. The drugstore owned by Dave was boycotted. The women of the town began to cut Margery and Elviry. The minister of the Methodist Church asked Dave for his resignation as Trustee.

To say that old Lizzie was pleased by the revelations would be perhaps to do the old lady an injustice. Yet the fact remains that she did go about with a knowing, "I told you so" air, that smacked of complacency.

"He always was just skulch," she insisted to Lydia. "When he was a child, he was the kind of a brat mothers didn't want their children to play with. I always prayed he'd get his come-uppers, and Elviry too. But I am sorry for Margery. Poor young one! Her future's ruined."

Lydia, sitting on the front steps in the lovely September afternoons, rubbed Adam's ears, watched the pine and the Norton herds and thought some long, long thoughts. Finally, one hazy Saturday afternoon, she gathered a great bunch of many colored asters and started off, without telling Lizzie of her destination.

It was nearly five o'clock when she stopped at the Marshalls' gate. The front of the house was closed, but nothing daunted, she made her way round to the kitchen door, which was open. Elviry answered her rap.

"Oh, it's Lydia," she said, brusquely. "What do you want?"

"I brought Marg some flowers," answered Lydia, awkwardly.

Elviry hesitated. "Margery's been having a headache and I don't know as she'd want to see you."

Lydia was not entirely daunted. "Well, if you're getting supper you might let me come and sit in the kitchen a few minutes. It's quite a walk in from the cottage."

Elviry opened the screen door and Lydia marched in and paused. Dave Marshall was sitting by the kitchen table, his hat on the back of his head, a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. He did not speak to Lydia when she came in, but Lydia nodded brightly at him and said, "You like to sit in the kitchen, the way Dad does, don't you?"

She sat down in the rocker by the dining-room door and Elviry began to stir a kettle of catsup that was simmering on the back of the stove.

This was worse than Lydia had thought it would be. She had not calculated on Dave's being at home. However, her fighting blood was up.

"You haven't asked me about my clothes, Mrs. Marshall," she said. "Don't you think I did pretty well with this skirt?"

Elviry glanced at the blue serge skirt. "It'll do," she answered listlessly.

Lydia looked at Dave desperately. At that moment there was a light step in the dining-room, and Margery came into the kitchen. When she saw Lydia she gasped.

"Hadn't you heard? Oh, Lydia! You came anyhow!" and suddenly Margery threw herself down and sobbed with her face in Lydia's lap.

Elviry threw her apron over her head and Dave, with a groan, dropped his head on his chest. For a moment, there was only the crackling of the fire in the stove and Margery's sobs to be heard.

Then Dave said, "What did you come for, Lydia? You only hurt yourself and you can't help us. I don't know what to do! God! I don't know what to do!"

"I don't see why everybody acts so," cried Elviry, "as if what you'd done was any worse than every one else's doings."

Margery raised her head. "Of course it's worse! A thousand times worse! I could have stood Dad's even having an Indian wife, better than this."

Dave looked at Margery helplessly and his chin quivered. Lydia noticed then how old he was looking.

"I want Margery and her mother to pack up and go away—for good," said Dave to Lydia. "I'll close up here and follow when I can. None of these cases will ever come to anything in our state court. It's the disgrace—and the way the women folks take it."

"I—I've been thinking," said Lydia, timidly, "that what you ought to do—"

Margery was sitting back on the floor now and she interrupted bitterly. "I don't see why you should try to help us, Lyd. Mother's always treated you dirt mean."

"It's not because of your mother," said Lydia, honestly. "I couldn't even try to forgive her—but—your father did a great favor to me and once I promised him then to be his friend. And you, Margery, you were fond of—of little Patience, and she did love you so! If she'd lived, I know she'd have wanted me to stand by you."

"She was a dear little kiddie," said Margery. "I always meant to tell you how I cried when she died, and then somehow, you were so silent, I couldn't."

The old lines round Lydia's mouth deepened for a minute, then she swallowed and said,

"I don't think it would do a bit of good for you all to go away. The story would follow you. Mr. Marshall ought to sell out everything and buy a farm. Let Mrs. Marshall go off for a visit, if she wants to, and let Margery come and stay with me a while and go to college."

Dave raised his head. "That's what I'd rather do, Lydia, for myself. Just stay here and try to live it down. I'd like to farm it. Always intended to."

Margery wrung her hands. "Oh, I don't see how I can! If it had been anything, anything but the Last Chance. Everybody will cut me and talk about me."

"Oh, well, Margery," said Lydia, a little impatiently, "it's the first trouble you've had in all your life and it won't kill you. Anybody that's as pretty as you are can live down anything. I know our house is awful scrimpy, but we'd have some good times, anyhow. Kent and Billy will stand by us and we'll pull through. See if we don't."

"I don't see why she needs to go to your house," said Elviry. "Let her stay right here, and go up to college with you if she will. And I don't want to go live on a farm, either."

"Mother, you don't understand, yet!" exclaimed Margery.

"Elviry," said Dave grimly, "our day is over. All we can hope to save out of the wreck is a future for Margery. Just get that through your head once and for all. I think Lydia's idea is horse sense. But it's for Margery to decide."

Margery got up from her place on the floor. "I thought we'd sell out and go to Europe for the rest of our lives," she said, "but as Lydia says, the story would follow us there. Dad," sharply, "you aren't going to sell the Last Chance and use that money?"

"I closed it up, last week," said Dave shortly. "I'm going to have the place torn down."

Margery rubbed her hand over her forehead. "Well," she said, "I don't see that I'd gain anything but a reputation for being a quitter, if I went to Lydia's. I'll stay with you folks, but I'll go to college, if Lydia'll stand by me."

Lydia rose. "Then that's settled. On Monday we'll register. I'll meet you on the eight o'clock car."

"I can't thank you, Lyd,—" began Margery.

"I don't want any thanks," said Lydia, making for the door, where Dave intercepted her with outstretched hand.

Lydia looked up into his dark face and her own turned crimson. "I can't shake hands," she said, "honestly, I can't. The Last Chance and the—the starving squaws make me sick. I'll stand by Margery and help you—but I can't do that."

Dave Marshall dropped his hand and turned away without a word and Lydia sped from the house into the sunset.

Amos heard Lydia's story of her call with a none too pleased face. "I don't think I want you mixing up with them, in any way," he said.

"But let me help Margery," pleaded Lydia, "Little Patience did love her so!"

"Well—Margery—you can help her," he agreed, reluctantly, "but you can't go near their house again. Margery will have to do all the visiting."



CHAPTER XVII

THE MILITARY HOP

"Who shall say that I do not understand what the wind sings in my branches or that I am less than the white or more than the Indian?"—The Murmuring Pine.

In spite of the fact that Levine had avoided her, after the hearing, and in spite of all the many half tragic ramifications of the reservation trouble, Lydia was not unhappy. In fact, when Registration day dawned she awoke with a sense of something good impending, sang as she dressed, and piloted Margery gaily through the complications of entering the University as a "special" student.

Margery, for the first month or so, was silent and kept as close as possible to Lydia's apron strings. But Lydia had prophesied truly. No girl as beautiful as Margery could be kept in Coventry long and though she refused for a time to go to parties, it was not long before Margery was taking tramps with the college boys and joining happily enough in the simple pleasures at the cottage.

Lydia did not hear from Kent until a week before the first college hop, late in October. Then she received a formal note from him, reminding her of his invitation.

"Oh, Lyd!" exclaimed Margery, "aren't you lucky! I haven't seen Kent or heard from him since our trouble!"

"Neither have I," said Lydia. "And I suspect he's so cross with me that he hates to keep this engagement. But I don't care. I wish I had a new dress. But I've made the sleeves small in my organdy and made a new girdle. It looks as well as could be expected!" she finished, comically.

"Lydia," cried Margery, suddenly, "I've a whole closet full of party dresses I won't wear this year and you and I are just of a size, won't you wear one—take one and keep it—please, Lydia!"

Lydia flushed and shook her head.

"Is it because they were bought with Dad's money?" asked Margery.

Lydia's flush grew deeper. "I couldn't take it anyway, Margery," she protested. But Margery tossed her head and was silent for the rest of the afternoon.

The hop was a success, a decided success, in spite of the organdy. Kent was inclined to be stiff, at first, and to wear a slightly injured air, and yet, mingled with this was a frank and youthful bravado. And there could be no doubt that among the college boys, Kent was more or less of a hero. It was something to boast of, evidently, to have one's name coupled with Levine's in the great scandal.

Kent had supposed that he would have some trouble in filling Lydia's card for her, but to his surprise, he found that in her timid way, Lydia was something of a personage among the older college boys and the younger professors.

"Oh, you have Miss Dudley. Let me have three dances, will you," said the instructor in Psychology. "How pretty she is to-night!"

"Lydia is a peach," Kent stated briefly. "One two-step is the best I can do for you."

"Come now, Moulton, a two-step and a waltz," said Professor Willis. "I haven't seen Miss Dudley since college opened. Isn't her hair wonderful to-night!"

Gustus was there with Olga. "Gimme a waltz with Lydia, Kent," he demanded. "Who'd ever thought she'd grow up so pretty! If she could dress well—"

"Her card's full," grunted Kent. "And she dresses better'n any girl I know. What's the matter with that dress?"

The two young men stood watching Lydia, who was chatting with Professor Willis. The dress was out of style. Even their masculine eyes recognized that fact, yet where in the room was there a mass of dusty gold hair like Lydia's, where such scarlet cheeks, where such a look of untried youth?

"Oh, well, it was just something Olga said," began Gustus.

"Olga makes me sick," said Kent, and he stalked over to claim a waltz with Lydia.

It was altogether an intoxicating evening and at its end Lydia pulled on her last winter's overcoat and clambered into Kent's little automobile, utterly satisfied with life.

"Well, did I give you a good time, Miss?" asked Kent, as they chug-chugged down the Avenue.

"Oh, Kent, it was wonderful!"

"And you don't feel as if I were a villain any more? You've forgiven me?"

"Forgiven you? For what?"

"For not agreeing with you on the Indian question. Gee, I was sore at you, Lyd, that morning at the hearing, and yet I was like your Dad. I was proud of you, too."

"Oh, don't let's talk about it, to-night, Kent," Lydia protested.

"All right, old girl, only just remember that I can't change. I back Mr. Levine to the limit. And maybe he hasn't a surprise party coming for all of you!"

"I don't care," insisted Lydia. "I'm going to be happy to-night, and I won't talk Indians. Oh, Kent, isn't Gustus getting good-looking?"

"Too fat," replied Kent. "He drinks too much beer. And let me call your attention to something funny. As you know, he's always had trouble getting in with the college set, because of the brewery. But his father is the only well-to-do man in town who's had nothing to do with the reservation, so now, by contrast, brewing becomes a highly honorable business! And Gustus goes with 'our very best families.'"

Lydia chuckled, then said, "Margery is feeling much better. She's at our house every Sunday. You must come round and see her!"

"Why shouldn't I come to see you, Lydia?" asked Kent, with a new note in his voice.

"Why, of course, you'd see me, but Margery's always been the main attraction with you."

"Has she? Seems to me I recall a time when I couldn't endure the sight of her. And when you were the best pal I had. That's what you are, Lydia, a real pal. A fellow can flirt round with the rest of 'em, but you're the one to look forward to spending a lifetime with!"

Lydia drew a quick breath, then laughed a little uncertainly. "You were the dearest boy! Do you remember how you hated to wash your hands and that funny cotton cap you liked to wear with Goldenrod Flour printed across it?"

"Of course, I remember. And I remember how the fellows used to tease me about you. I licked Gustus twice for it, when we were in the ward schools. Lydia, let's go over those old trails together again. To-morrow's Sunday. Let's take a walk down to the Willows in the afternoon."

"All right, Kent," said Lydia, quietly, and silence fell on both of them till they drew up at the cottage gate.

Kent lifted Lydia to the ground, held both of her hands, started to speak, then with a half inarticulate, "Thank you, Lydia, and good-by till to-morrow," he jumped into the little car and was gone.

For some reason, when she woke the next morning, Lydia half hoped that the soft patter against her window was of rain drops. But it was the wind-tossed maple leaves, whose scarlet and gold were drifting deep on the lawn and garden. There never was a more brilliant October day than this, and at three o'clock, Lydia and Kent set off down the road to the Willows.

Lizzie watched them from the living-room window. "They're a handsome pair, Amos," she said. "Now aren't they?"

Amos looked up from his Sunday paper with a start. "Those young ones aren't getting sentimental, are they, Liz?" he asked, sharply.

"Well," returned Lizzie, "they might be, very naturally, seeing they're both young and good-looking. For the land sake! Don't you expect Lydia to find her young man and settle down?"

"No, I don't!" snapped Amos. "There isn't a man on earth good enough for Lydia. I don't want her to marry. I'll take care of her."

"Humph! Nothing selfish about a man, is there?" muttered Lizzie.

Kent and Lydia strolled along the leafy road, with the tang of the autumn in their nostrils, and the blue gleam of the lake in their eyes. It was only a half mile to the Willows and as they turned in, Kent took Lydia's hand and drew it through his arm.

"Look," he said, "I believe there is even a little left of our cave, after all this time. What a rough little devil I was in those days. And yet, even then, Lyd, I believe I had an idea of trying to take care of you."

"You were not a rough little devil!" exclaimed Lydia, indignantly. "You were a dear! I can never forget what you did for me, when little Patience died."

"I was a selfish brute in lots of ways afterward, though," said Kent, moodily. "I didn't have sense enough to appreciate you, to realize—yet, I did in a way. Remember our talks up at camp? Then, of course, we never shall agree on the Indian question. But what does that amount to?"

Kent dropped Lydia's hand and faced her. "Lydia, do you care for me—care for me enough to marry me?"

Lydia turned pale. Something in her heart began to sing. Something in her brain began to stir, uncomfortably.

"Oh, Kent," she began, breathlessly, then paused and the two looked deep into each other's eyes.

"Lydia! Lydia!! I need you so!" cried Kent. "You are such a dear, such a pal, so pretty, so sweet—and I need you so! Won't you marry me, Lydia?"

He seized both her hands and held them against his cheeks.

"I've always loved you dearly, Kent, and yet," faltered Lydia, "and yet, somehow, I don't think we'd ever make each other happy."

"Not make each other happy! I'd like to know why not! Just try me, Lydia! Try me!"

Kent's charming face was glowing. Into Lydia's contralto voice crept the note that had belonged to little Patience's day.

"I'd like to try you, dear if—— Wait, Kent, wait! Let me have my playtime, Kent. I've never had a real one, you know, till now. Let me finish college, then ask me again, will you, Kent?"

Kent jerked his head discontentedly. "I think it would be better for us to tie to each other right now. Please, Lydia dear!"

Lydia shook her head slowly. "Let me have my playtime, Kent. I don't know that side of myself at all."

Kent looked at the lake and at the little cave of long ago and back into the clear tender blue of Lydia's eyes. Then he said softly, "All right, dear! You know best. But will you give me just one kiss,—for remembrance?"

"Yes," replied Lydia, lifting her face, and Kent pulled off his cap and kissed the warm, girlish lips, tenderly, lingeringly, then, without a word, gently turned Lydia homeward.

Kent's announcement that he had broken with Billy Norton did not amount to a great deal. As winter came on, he and Billy met constantly at the cottage and outwardly at least, were friendly. The commission finished its sitting and turned its findings over to Congress. Congress instructed the District Attorney to carry the matter to the state courts. When this had been done all the incriminated heaved a vast sigh of relief, and prepared to mark time.

To tell the truth, Lydia was not giving a great deal of thought to weighty problems, this winter. No girl who finds herself with two young men in love with her, can give much thought to the world outside her own. Nor did the fact that Professor Willis made a point of appearing at the cottage at least once a month detract any from her general joy in life.

She was doing well in her studies, though outside of the occasional hop she attended with Billy or Kent, she had no part in the college social life. She was not altogether contented with the thought of preparing herself to teach. The idea gave her no mental satisfaction. She could not bring herself to believe that her real talents lay in that direction. Yet, though this dissatisfaction grew as the days went on, it did not prevent her from taking a keen pleasure in the books she read and studied.

She suddenly grew ashamed of her old E. P. Roe period and developed a great avidity for Kipling and Thomas Hardy, for Wordsworth and Stephen Phillips. To her surprise she found that Billy was more familiar with these writers than she. Kent read newspapers and nothing else.

During all Lydia's Junior year, but one fly appeared in her ointment. And this, of course, was with, reference to clothes! that perennial haunting problem of Lydia's, which only a woman who has been motherless and poverty-stricken and pretty can fully appreciate. The latter part of February, the great college social event of the year was to come, the Junior Prom. Lydia felt sure that either Kent or Billy would ask her to go and for this the organdy would not do. And for this she must have a party coat.

Lydia knew if she took the matter up with Amos he would go out and borrow money for her. She shuddered at the thought of this. He had been so bitter about her fudge selling that she dared not broach the matter of money earning to him again. Then she heard of the College Money Making Bureau. She discovered that there were girls who were earning their way through college and that the Bureau was one of the quiet ways used by the University to help them.

There was the Mending Department for example. Here were brought every week by the well-to-do students piles of mending of every variety from heelless socks and stockings, to threadbare underwear and frayed cuffs and collars. These were made into packages and farmed out to the money needing girls. The Department was located in a room in the rear of the Chemical laboratory, and was in charge of the old janitor, whose casual manner was a balm to the pride of the most sensitive.

Early in January, Lydia sneaked into the little room, and out again with a neat but heavy bundle. She got home with it and smuggled it into her room without old Lizzie's seeing it. Socks, wristbands and torn lace—there was fifty cents' worth of mending in the package! Lydia calculated that if she did a package a night for thirty nights, she would have enough money to buy the making of the party dress and cloak.

The necessity for secrecy was what made the task arduous. Lydia finished her studying as hurriedly as possible each night and went on to her room. It was bitter cold in the room when the door was closed, but she hung a dust cloth over the keyhole, a shawl over the window shade, wrapped herself in a quilt and unwrapped the bundle. By two o'clock she had finished and shivering and with aching eyes, crept into bed.

Within a week she was going about her daily work with hollow eyes and without the usual glow in her cheeks. Within two weeks, the casual glimpse of Lizzie darning one of Amos' socks gave her a sense of nausea, but she hung on with determination worthy of a better cause.

The third week she took cold, an almost unheard-of proceeding for Lydia, and in spite of all old Lizzie's decoctions, she could not throw it off. Amos insisted that Lizzie see her to bed each night with hot lemonade and hot water bottle. Lydia protested miserably until she found that it was really more comfortable to mend in bed than it was to sit quilt-wrapped in a chair. At the end of the fourth week she carried back her last bundle, and with fifteen dollars in her pocketbook, she boarded the street-car for home. She was trembling with fatigue and fever.

When she reached the cottage, she stretched out on the couch behind the old base burner with her sense of satisfaction dulled by her hard cough and the feverish taste in her mouth. She was half asleep, half in a stupor when Billy came in.

"How's the cold, Lyd?" he asked.

"I got it," she murmured hoarsely. "It'll be white mull and pink eider-down."

"What did you say?" asked Billy, coming over to the couch and peering down at her, through the dusk.

"Socks," whispered Lydia, "bushels of socks, aren't there, Billy?"

Billy picked up her hand and felt her pulse, pulled the shawl up over her chest, put his cheek down against her forehead for a moment as he murmured, "Oh, Lydia, don't be sick! I couldn't bear it!" then he hurried to the kitchen where Lizzie was getting supper.

The next thing that Lydia knew she was in her own bed and "Doc" Fulton was taking the clinical thermometer from her mouth. She was very much confused.

"Where's my fifteen dollars?" she asked.

"What fifteen dollars, little daughter?" Amos was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her hand.

"For my party dress—white mull—with socks—please, Daddy."

Amos looked at Lizzie. "It's what she wanted for the Junior Prom, I guess," said the old lady, "poor child."

"You shall have fifteen dollars, just as soon as you get well, honey," said Amos.

"All right," said Lydia, hoarsely, "tell Kent so's he—" She trailed off again into stupor.

It was a hard pull, a sharp, hard struggle with badly congested lungs, for two weeks. It was the first real illness Lydia had had in all her sturdy young life. Ma Norton took charge and "Doc" Fulton was there night after night. Margery came every day, with a basket, for Elviry practically fed Amos during the two weeks. Billy did chores. Kent was errand boy with the little car. And Adam sat on the doorstep for hours and howled!

And all this time Lydia wandered in a world of her own, a world that those about her were utterly unable to picture through the erratic fragments of talk she uttered from time to time. She talked to them of little Patience, of John Levine, of old Susie, She seemed to be blaming herself for the starving of an Indian baby who was confused in her mind with little Patience. She sought her fifteen dollars through wild vicissitudes, until Amos found the little purse under the couch pillow and, wondering over its contents, put it in Lydia's feverish hands. Thereafter she talked of it no more.

But Lydia was splendidly strong. One night, after ten days of stupor and delirium, she opened her eyes on Amos' haggard face. She spoke weakly but naturally. "Hello, Dad! Ask Margery to get me the pattern we were talking about. In a day or so I'll be up and around."

Amos began to cry for sheer joy.

Once she began to mend, Lydia's recovery was unbelievably rapid. On a Sunday, a week before the Junior Prom., she was able to dress and to lie on the living-room couch. During the afternoon, Kent came in. He had had one or two glimpses of the invalid before, but this was the first opportunity he'd had for a chat.

"Hello, Lyd!" he cried. "Are you going to go to the Junior Prom. with me, after all?"

"Kent, I can't go. I might be strong enough for one or two dances by that time, but I can't get my clothes done."

"Pshaw, isn't that hard luck!" Kent's voice was soft with sympathy. "Never mind, old lady! I'm so darned glad to have you getting well so fast, that the Prom. doesn't matter. Say, Lyd, Margery's come out fine, since you've been sick!"

"I know it," said Lydia. "Just think of Margery carrying Dad's meals in a basket, and helping Lizzie with the dishes. And I know she hates it worse than poison. She's out in the kitchen now, making fudge."

Kent brightened, perceptibly. "Is she? Er—Lydia, don't you think she'd go to the Prom. with me? Seems to me she's cut out society as long as she needs to."

Lydia buried her nose in a bunch of violets that Professor Willis had sent her. "I think she ought to go if she wants to," she said.

"Guess I'll ask her now," cried Kent, disappearing kitchenward.

Lydia lay watching snowflakes sift softly past the window. It was not long before Margery and Kent appeared.

"She's going!" cried Kent.

Margery's beautiful eyes were glowing. "Yes, I'm going, Lyd! And if nobody else will dance with me, Kent will take all the dances."

Old Lizzie followed in. She looked sharply at Lydia, then said, "You folks come out in the dining-room and let Lydia have a little nap."

"No, I guess I'll go home," Margery answered, "Mother's not very well to-day."

"I'll take you along in my chug-chug." Kent crossed over to the couch and took Lydia's hand, while Margery went for her wraps. "Good-by, dear," he whispered, "get well fast for me."

Lydia smiled at him over the bunch of violets.

Billy was the next caller. "I left Dad and Amos saving the Nation through Free Trade," he said. "Gee, Lydia, but you do look better! You don't suppose you could possibly go to the Prom., just for one or two dances, do you?"

Lydia shook her head. "No clothes," she said, briefly. "Ask some other girl."

"There isn't any other girl," replied Billy. "If I can't go with you, I'll be hanged if I go at all! Lydia, I don't see why a sensible girl like you lays such stress on clothes. Honestly, it's not like you. Come on, be a sport and go in your usual dress."