ard of something up north and never came back.... We boys
scattered around where we could get work. Two of us is married and got
families. Guess they wish often enough they hadn't, too!"

Adelle was absorbed by the mason's personal statement. She had forgotten
by this time her first self-consciousness in talking to the discharged
workman, and he, too, seemed less truculent, as if he enjoyed letting
off steam and stating his point of view to his ex-employer.

"How old are you?" Adelle asked.

"Twenty-eight," the mason replied.

That was only a few years older than Adelle herself, but she recognized
that the man's experience of living had been far more than hers, also
deeper, so that he was justified in having opinions on the serious
things of life. Wealth, she might think, was not the only road to "a
full life" so much talked of in her circle.

"Have you always been a stone mason?" she wanted to know.

"Pretty much ever since I could lift a stone. An old feller took me from
mother to work for my keep when I was fourteen. He used to do some mason
work, and he knew how to lay stone--none better! He learned his trade
back East where he come from. He was one of the real forty-niners, and
knew my grandfather's folks--they all came to California the same
time.... I've been all over this country, up and down the Coast, to
Alasky and over in Nevada, at Carson City; drilling for oil, too, south.
Oh, I've seen things," he mused complacently, puffing at his pipe and
scratching his bare arms that were as smooth and brown as fine bronze.
"And I tell you there ain't much in it for the laboring-man, no matter
what wages he gets, unless he's got extry luck, which most of 'em ain't.
No wonder he goes after booze when he has the chance. What's there in it
for him anyhow?"

Adelle, who had not been educated to philanthropy and social service,
did not attempt to answer this difficult question.

"Not that I booze often," the mason explained with pride. "I reckon not
to make a hog of myself, but when you've been off on a job for months,
working all day long six days in the week in the heat and dust, you
accumulate a thirst and a devilment in you that needs letting out."

He grinned at Adelle as if he felt that she might be sympathetic with
his simple point of view and added,--

"I guess that's what made me sassy to you this morning!"

It was his sole apology. They both laughed, accepting it as such, and
Adelle, to shift the topic,