"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of California for his pickings." The judge turned to Adelle laughingly. "Your cousin doesn't seem to see any good reason why the California Clarks should be chosen for Fortune's favor." "Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth--and I ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection. Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out into the freedom of the impersonal. "Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for themselves over their neighbors." "What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded. "Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any rights--extremely few rights, at any rate." "Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money." "I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as any other twenty-five taken at random." Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated. "But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!" "I don't see what you mean," the mason said. "Nor I," said Adelle.