nze and
their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of
his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in
good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy.

Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room,
realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were
people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to
acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these
were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who
could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large
fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle
had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people
like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by
something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never
become one of these.

But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she
forgot his defects of appearance--his red neck and great paws and clumsy
posture. She felt once more the man--the man she had come to respect and
like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture.
After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason
himself who asked her bluntly,--

"Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?"

Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the
Washington Trust Company.

"So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight
contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!"

Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed
lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for
him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in
Fortune's smiles.

"It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what
they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law."

"And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously.

For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she
was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time
since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to
admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not
have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were
plain proof of her concern for him.

"Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was