ast, with his
ironical laugh.

"I suppose so," Adelle replied seriously. "You'll have to explain it to
them. How many brothers and sisters have you?"

"There are five of us left," Clark said. "I'm sorry mother has gone. She
would have liked mighty well having a bit of ready money for herself.
She never had much of a time in her life," he added, thinking of the
hard-working wife and mother who had died in poverty after struggling
against odds for fifty years. "It'll mean a good deal, too, to Will and
Stan, I guess;--they've got families, you know."

Adelle listened with a curious detachment to the happiness that her
magic lamp might bestow when handed over to the other branch of the
family.

"Money doesn't always mean so much," she remarked, with a deep
realization of the platitude which so many people repeat hypocritically.

The mason looked at her skeptically out of his blue eyes. That was the
sort of silly pretense the rich or well-to-do often got off for the
benefit of their poorer neighbors--he read stories like that in the
newspapers and magazines. But he knew that the rich usually clung to all
their possessions, in spite of their expressed conviction, at times, of
the inadequacy of material things to provide them with happiness. He was
quite ready for his part, having experienced the other side, to run the
risks of property!

"I'd like to try having all the money I want for a time!" he laughed
hardily.

"I almost believe it would have been better for me if I had never heard
of Clark's Field!" Adelle exclaimed, with a bitter sense of the futility
of her own living. And then she told her cousin very briefly what had
happened to her since she first entered the probate court and had been
made a ward of the trust company.

The mason listened with interest and tried to make out, as well as he
could with his meager equipment of experience in such matters and
Adelle's bare statement, what had been the trouble with her life. At the
end he stated his conclusion,--

"I guess it depends on what sort of stuff you've got in you whether
money agrees with you or don't. To some folks it does seem poison, like
drink; but the trouble ain't with the money, perhaps, it's with them."

"I suppose so," Adelle admitted meekly. "I had no one to show me, and,
anyway, I am not the right kind, I suppose. It takes a good deal of a
person to spend money right and get the best out of it there is."

"Sure!" the mason replied freely;