d, which was the main thoroughfare into this part of the
country. Many a time have I seen their covered wagons returning from the
city about the time when I was starting for school, the horses wearily
plodding along at a walk, the farmer or his boy asleep in the wagon on
his empty crates.

I don't know what sort of an arrangement old Clark made with his tenant,
but Adams, who was a hard-working fellow with a tribe of strong
children, must have found the business profitable, especially after he
built the forcing-houses and began to supply unseasonable luxuries to
the prosperous citizens of B----. Prices ran high in the years of the
great war, and those farmers who stayed at home and cultivated their
gardens industriously made money at every turn. At any rate, it was
common knowledge in the neighborhood of Fuller Place that Everitt Adams
wished to purchase Clark's Field from its owner--the last piece of the
old farm that he had not hitherto disposed of--and had the money to pay
for it in the River Savings Bank. Indeed, gossip said that the price was
agreed upon,--five thousand dollars,--which was considered a fair price
in those days for fifty acres, six or seven miles from the city. And
Samuel Clark, so tradition also says, was anxious to sell his last field
for that price. His son had returned from the war wounded and incapable
of work, and his father wanted to set him up in a small shop in the
Square. The son, in spite of his invalidism, married shortly after his
return from the ranks and this made the need of ready money in the
Church Street house all the more urgent.

Trouble came when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered
what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field
had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which
would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To
explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day
into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between
Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward
Stanley--the elder son--going off to seek his fortunes in the new West,
which was attracting young men from the East at that time. This was in
1840 or thereabouts when Edward S. left his father's home in Alton, and
nothing more had been heard of him except the vague report from some
other exile from Alton that he had been seen in Chicago where he had
become a carpenter, and it