The judge looked at the young woman with a curious, indulgent smile. He had gathered from her story that her own experience with Clark's Field had not been a successful one by any means. Was that why she was so anxious to shoulder off upon these unknown members of her family the burden of riches which had proved too much for her? Just what was her motive? A conscience newly aroused by her terrible tragedy and hypersensitive? An interest womanwise in this young stone mason, who was the only one of the California Clarks she had yet seen?... The judge leaned forward and took Adelle's hand. "Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money. For of course it would be _your_ money that they would get in the end, if by any possibility they could win their case." Adelle looked into the old man's kind eyes, but did not reply. It was not easy for her to explain the persistent purpose that moved her. "Has wealth meant so much to you? or so little?" the judge asked, thinking of his own part in providing Adelle's fortune for her. Adelle slowly shook her head. "Do you think that these other Clarks would use it more wisely?" And as Adelle did not reply at once he repeated,--"Have you any reason to believe that they would be happier than you have been or better?" "Money doesn't make happiness," Adelle said with a pathetic conviction of the truth of the truism. The energy of her life, it seemed, as in the case of so many others, had been given to proving the truth of axioms one after another! The judge smiled and released her hand. He sat back in his deep chair watching Adelle with kindly eyes. He seemed to see the woman's awakening mind slowly at work before him, struggling patiently to grasp what was still just beyond her comprehension. "What shall I do?" she appealed finally. "Tell me!" "There is something you can do--a very simple thing! I wonder it has not occurred to you before." "What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly. "You can give part of your own fortune--an exact half of it if you like--to these new cousins of yours, and so accomplish what you want without hurting any one but yourself." "I don't think they would take the money that way--I don't believe _he_ would!" Adelle said doubtfully. "There are few persons," the judge observed indulgently, "who cannot be induced to take money in one way or another!" "It isn't quite the same thing," Adelle said, in a disappointed tone. "I don't think he would like it that way." "It amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?" "Perhaps." She did not tell the judge that if she should give these California Clarks one half of the fortune she had received from Clark's Field, she should be poor, perhaps destitute. "But before you decide to do anything, you must make up your mind very carefully, for it cannot be undone. Are you quite sure that you are doing the wisest thing in turning over such a large fortune to persons you know almost nothing about?"