table of the Clarks and their possessions. Now it is all inextricably
woven in my memory into a web of fact and fancy. The Field stood for me
during those fertile years as the physical symbol of the unknown, the
mysterious,--the source of adventure and legend,--long, long after I had
outgrown childish imaginings and had become fully involved in what we
like to call the serious matters of life. To-day I had but to close my
eyes and think of Fuller Place and my boyhood there to see that lonely
field, jealously hedged about by its fence of tall white palings,--see
it in all its former emptiness and mystery.

Of Clark's Field and the Clarks I mused as I retraced my way through the
maze of living that had been planted upon the old open land. All this
close-packed brick and mortar, these dull streets and high business
buildings, had been crowded man-fashion into the free, wind-swept field
of my fancy. Five thousand people at least must now be living and
largely have their being on our old playground,--a small town in itself.
And the change had come about in the last fifteen years or less. How had
it been brought to pass? Why after all the years of idleness that it had
endured had a use for Clark's Field been found? Something must have
broken that spell which had effectually restrained prospective
purchasers of real estate through all the years when the city was
pressing on beyond this point far away into the country.... The facts
are not all dime-novelish, but very human and significant, and by chance
the main thread of the real story of Clark's Field came to my knowledge
shortly after my visit, correcting and enlarging the impressions I had
formed from family gossip, the talk of playmates, and my own
imagination. And this story--the story of Clark's Field--I deem well
worth setting forth....

That same evening, when I entered the city hotel where I was to dine, I
found my friend walking impatiently up and down the lobby, for in my
search for the past I had forgotten my engagement and was late. Scarcely
greeting my guest, I burst out,--

"Edsall, do you remember Clark's Field?" (For Edsall had once lived in
Alton, though not in my part of the town.)

"Yes," he replied, somewhat surprised by my breathless eagerness. "What
about it?"

"I want to know what happened to it and why?"

Edsall, being a lawyer with a special interest in real estate, could
tell me many of the known facts about the Clark property over which
there