"Did you ever hear any one of them speak of Alton?" He slowly shook his head. "Never heard the name of the place before that I know of." "Oh," Adelle observed in a disappointed tone, "I thought you might know where they came from before the Missouri time." The mason gave a short, harsh laugh and stuck his pipe back between his teeth. "I don't see as it makes any odds where they came from," he remarked. "I guess we ain't got any fancy family tree to boast of." "Well," Adelle observed; and then, recollecting her other intention, she said,-- "Don't you want some flowers or fruit or stuff from the garden? You can't raise much up here." "No, thanks; I don't want nothin'--much obliged to you." In spite of the conventional terms there was a surly burr to his tone that belied the courtesy. Adelle was surprised at the hardness of his mood. She felt quite friendly, almost intimate with him, after all their talks, and now he was as gruff as he had been the first day. She looked at his face for an explanation. He was scowling slightly, and in the reddish light of the setting sun his face seemed to burn as with fever, and his blue eyes glinted dangerously. She could not make out what was going on in the man's mind. Probably he did not himself rightly know. The discovery that he bore the same name as his employer had once might have set off some unpleasant train of subconscious reflection, accentuating the bitter sense of class distinction and the unreason of it, which he was only too prone to entertain. He did not want any "kindness" from rich people. He worked for them because he must, but he worked in a spirit of armed neutrality at the best, like so many of his kind, and he spat mentally upon Carnegie libraries and all other evidences of the philanthropic spirit in those relieved from the toil of day labor. Adelle could not follow this, but she knew that the man was close to an explosion point of some sort, as he had been that other time when she had encountered him before his shack. Then he had suddenly jumped up from the doorstep, the lust for action in his movement, and had disappeared for the better part of a week. She felt that he might be on the verge of another such outbreak and tried clumsily to prevent it if possible. She hesitated, thinking what to say, while the mason glared at her as if he were controlling himself with an effort. "I thought you might like something," she said at last. "There's plenty, and you are welcome to what you want." "I don't want nothin'"; and he added meaningly,--"least of all flowers and fruits." "There are a lot of magazines at the house--you might call for them or books." "I don't do much reading."