"Hell! She ain't thinkin' of doin' that!" "She certainly was. She would have made the proposal to you already, if I had not asked her to wait until I could advise with her again." The young man's blue eyes opened wide in astonishment. "What good would that do her?" "It would give all of you California Clarks your slice of Clark's Field--how many of you are there?" "I dunno exactly--maybe twenty or twenty-five--I haven't kep' count." "Say there are twenty-five heirs of old Edward S. living. Each of them would have a hundred thousand dollars apiece roughly. That sum of money is not to be despised even to-day." "You bet it ain't," murmured the mason feelingly. His face settled into a scowl; and leaning forward he demanded,--"What are you drivin' at anyway, Judge?" The judge did not answer. "You ain't goin' to let that woman hand over all her money to a lot of little no-'count people she's never laid eyes on, just because they are called 'Clark' instead of 'Smith' or some other name?" "You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh. "I know that,--and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole bunch,--but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!" The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect. "It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused. "What is it, then? It ain't law!" "No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, "justice and wisdom and mercy!" The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a grandson of Edward S. Clark. "Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to other considerations, "about these California Clarks--what do you know of them?" The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead level of local obscurity.