many times
later, as long as the judge lived. So he was able to watch the idea that
had sprung into being, helped by his wise sympathy, grow and bear its
slow fruit to his satisfaction. In starting this chance couple upon the
quest of their scattered relatives, to play the part of Providence to
all the little, unknown California Clarks, and also to restore to
Clark's Field its own riches, which for two generations had been
unjustly hoarded for the use of one human being, the judge was doubtless
doing a dangerous and revolutionary thing, according to the belief of
many good people, something certainly ill befitting a retired judge of
the probate courts of his staid Commonwealth! Had he not been employed
for forty years of his life in expounding and upholding that absurd code
of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have
preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the
lower Rhine? Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most
sacred object of worship that the race has--the holy institution of
private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views
upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed
tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as
if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the
approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into
human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did
he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. He thought Adelle one
of the safest persons in the universe, because she could derive good
from her mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the
safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls.
The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the
young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human
lottery.

As to what they might do to each other in the course of their mutual
education, the judge left that wisely to that other Providence of his
fathers, sure that Adelle this time would not take such a long and
painful road to wisdom as she had done in marrying Archie. But we must
not mistake the judge's last foolish remark,--interpret it, at least in
a merely sentimental sense, too literally. Like a poet the judge spoke
in symbols of matters that cannot be phrased in any tongue precisely. He
did not think of their marrying each other, because th