parasitic industries, such as tack-mills,
paper-box factories, and other occupations that use the labor of women
and children. It was one long, smoky, grimy thoroughfare, where in a
small, congested area the coarser labors of humanity were performed
wholesale by a race of imported gnomes, such as might be found in any of
the larger centers of the country. Alton was not one of the "show
places," and it may be wondered why the judge had chosen to drive his
guests thither instead of to the famous parks of the city.

But Adelle suspected something of his purpose, and more when they turned
into that brick maze of small streets that had once been Clark's Field.
At this the Californian's mobile face expressed frank contempt, not to
say disgust. Even on this beautiful May morning, Clark's Field, with its
close-packed rows of lofty tenements, its narrow, dirty alleys, and
monotonous blocks of ugly brick facades, was dreary, depressing, a
needless monstrosity of civilization. And all this had come about in a
little over ten years, as the judge carefully explained to the mason. It
had taken less than a generation to cover Clark's Field with its load of
brick and mortar, to make it into a swarming hive of mean human lives--a
triumph of our day, so often boastfully celebrated in newspaper and
magazine, the triumph of efficient property exploitation by the
Washington Trust Company under the thin disguise of the "Clark's Field
Associates"!

The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every
dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young
stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It
is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third
time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her
cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed
searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to
comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she
had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at
least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she
had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of.
And it made her thoughtful.

About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a
motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the
noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant co