w thoughts--about the cousin in his shack, the way in which he had
taken her news of their relationship, and also the calm manner in which
he had stood her husband's outrageous behavior. She as nearly admired
the cold humor with which he received her husband's abuse until Archie
had struck her as she did anything she knew in the way of conduct. The
mason cousin might use bad grammar and chew tobacco and go on sprees
occasionally, but as between him and her husband he was the gentleman of
the two--better still, the man of the two. His patience under insult and
his treating Archie like a child when he saw that the "gentleman" had
been drinking were truly admirable!

As for Archie it was not a new experience for her latterly to lie awake
cogitating her marriage in unhappy sleeplessness. It had seemed to her
on such occasions that all the old banker's predictions about the
results of her marrying Archie had come true like a curse, and sooner
than might have been thought. But never before had she seen so clearly
how impossible Archie was, never before felt herself without one atom of
regard for him--not even desire. And yet her mind was too little fertile
in expedients to suggest to her any way out of her trouble. She was of
those many women who will not take a step even against the most brutal
of husbands until driven into it. So she quickly dismissed him from her
thoughts.

It was then that for the first time, in connection with her new cousin,
she thought of the money--the buried treasure of Clark's Field, which
had been discovered for her benefit and which had been of such poor use
to her apparently. Archie, she had said to herself, was less of a man
than this rough stone mason, Tom Clark. He was, after all, nothing more
than a very ordinary American citizen, with the prestige and power of
her wealth. If that other man had happened to have the money--and it was
here that light broke over her. It did belong to him, at least a large
part of it! She recalled now the substance of those legal lectures she
had received at different times from the officers of the trust company.
The trouble about Clark's Field all these years had been the
disappearance of an heir, the elder brother of her grandfather, and the
lack of absolute proof that he had left no heirs behind him when he
died, to claim his undivided half interest in the field. But he had left
heirs, a whole family of them, it seemed! And to them, of course,
belonged at lea