"You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh.
"I know that,—and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole bunch,—but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!"
The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect.
"It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused.
"What is it, then? It ain't law!"
"No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, "justice and wisdom and mercy!"
The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a grandson of Edward S. Clark.
"Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to other considerations, "about these California Clarks—what do you know of them?"
The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead level of local obscurity.
"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of California for his pickings."