re was the
faint trace of the _a_. But who was "Sam"?

It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom
of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather's name. It was
old Samuel Clark's signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned
back to look at the date. It was 1847--July 19. She looked at the
envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton's,
8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and
spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all
about family matters--the letter of one brother to another. There were
references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending
himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested
his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the
contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She
knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of
Sam's verbose self-defense.

What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason
was related to her--was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder
brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of
the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It
was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had
always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He
had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he
inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited
through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in
certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the
Family! Adelle had no great class pride, as must have been perceived,
but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was
cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall--an uneducated
young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees,
vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great
difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had
said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man's lot, that one of
his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much
to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she
had discovered from his grandfather's letters, but the fact itself of
her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning