"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet."
"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the judge put in.
"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of it, as much as mine,—more, perhaps."
"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with his dry laugh.
"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs to itself—to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to get from it their daily bread and shelter."
"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill."
"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you did—especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can act as trustees for Clark's Field—" He turned to Adelle and continued whimsically,—"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent improvements?—which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what properly belongs to it and to them."
So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to understand it now.
"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?"
"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his suggestions."