ot
utter it. Instead, he dropped Adelle's hand and with a nod of dismissal
turned into his chambers. So Adelle left the probate court, as she
thought for the last time, wondering what the judge wanted to say to
her, but had refrained from speaking.

It would be interesting to know, also, what were the entries that Judge
Orcutt made in his little note-book upon this, his final official act in
the Clark's Field drama. But that we have no means of discovering. All
legal requirements had been duly fulfilled, and everything else must
remain within the judge's breast for his own spiritual nourishment--and
for Adelle's if she could divine what he meant.

XXIX

When Adelle reached the street she found Archie lolling in the car,
across the way, in the shade of a tall building. At her appearance he
yawned and stretched his cramped legs.

"It took you an awful time," he grumbled to his wife. "What was the
trouble?"

"Nothing," Adelle replied.

As she got into the car she gave the driver an order,--"Go out to
Alton."

"Where's that?" Archie inquired.

"A little way out--across the river," Adelle informed him.

"What do you want to go there for--it's nearly lunch-time," Archie
demurred.

"I'm going out to see Clark's Field," Adelle replied succinctly.

Archie knew vaguely that the Field had something to do with his wife's
fortune, but understood that it had been mostly "cashed in" as he would
phrase it.

"What's your hurry?" Archie objected. "We can go out there some other
time just as well."

But for once Archie was compelled to bend to a superior purpose and
endure being bumped over the rough pavements of the city out to the old
South Road, which was still cut up badly by heavy teaming as it had been
in the days of the farmers' market carts, and which also swarmed with
huge trolley boxes and motor trucks and pedestrians. For Alton was now
merely a lively industrial quarter of the "greater" city. In addition to
the old stove-works of enduring fame there were also foundries and
factories and mills. The old, leisurely "Square" had become a knot of
squalid arteries radiating into this human hive. Life teemed all over,
swarmed upon the pavements, hung from the high tenement windows,
infested the strange delicatessen and drink shops, many of which bore
foreign names. Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale
American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely
disappeared from the Alton