d of his post-office address, all these
Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!"

"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked.

She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation
of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been
lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his
post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's
Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle
Clark--and no book about her and Clark's Field!

The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the
point of his thumb. He mused,--

"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we
know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some
easy money!"

He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation--the
picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched
hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter
perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic
sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to
property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession,
that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself
to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School
taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and
position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another.
He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances
where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to
Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded
intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated--or
thought he did--all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been
kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for
without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life
than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing
false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him
all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must
find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of
real benefit to him.

"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs
said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut