The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of. And it made her thoughtful. About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant corner, the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve it with a building to suit tenant, etc. "About all the open space and blue sky there is left!" the judge remarked, pointing out the figures of a few dirty children who were exploring a puddle and a pit of rubbish in the vacant lot. (These, I suppose, were the descendants of that brave body of little hoodlums of which I and my brothers were members years ago, and the puddle and pit were all that was left of our mysterious playground!) "There's a heap of cheap foreign rubbish all around here," the mason growled, spitting contemptuously into the roadbed, as if he resented that human beings could be found forlorn enough, low enough, to labor under such conditions. "Not one of 'em looks as if he had had enough to eat or knew what a good wash was or what the earth smells like!" No, the Coast for him, and the sooner the better, too! The judge smiled tolerantly, observing,-- "I don't suppose they have much chance to bathe here. The city cannot afford to put up public baths and employers rarely think of those things." "Look at the rotten stuff they eat!" The mason pointed disdainfully to the tipcarts drawn up along the curb, where men and women were chaffering over dried fish and forlorn vegetables that would have soured the soul of old Adams, who once raised celery on this very spot. "Don't the folks in these parts eat better than that?" "Not generally," the judge replied. "We have no public market in this city, and it is very difficult for the poorer sort to get fresh food." "You'd oughter see the California markets!" the young man bragged. "Tell me about them," the judge said.