very one in California was talking oil, and of course
lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of
the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English
walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained
that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then
been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also
at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized
that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a
mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and
he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight
usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more
money.

* * * * *

One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time--a
picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her
little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not
understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had
written it out in pencil,--"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in
tiny letters,--"F. de M."

"What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious
letters.

"Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,--"Daughter
of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?"

Adelle had not understood then, nor had she thought of it all these
years. But now the incident came back to her from its deep resting-place
in her consciousness, and she understood its full meaning. She, too, was
a child of God! albeit she had lived many years and done folly and
suffered sorrow before she could recognize it.

And so Clark's Field had taught its last great lesson,--Clark's Field,
that fifty acres of lean, level land with its crop of bricks and mortar,
its heavy burden of human lives, the sacrificial altar of our economic
system and our race prejudices,--Clark's Field! We pass it night and
morning of all the days of our lives, but rarely see it--see, that is,
more than its bricks and mortar and empty faces. It should be called, in
the quaint phrase of the judge's people, "God's Acre!" One might say
that the beauty, the supreme fruit of this Clark's Field, which never
blossomed into flower and fruit all these years we have been concerned
with its fate, was Adelle. Just Adelle! The judge thought that was
enough. Adelle would go on, he believed, growing i