was said had married. Probably Samuel, who
was then a young man and recently married with two little children, had
no great desire to have his elder brother's existence recalled to his
father. Everything I have learned about Samuel confirms the impression
of him I had as a boy, that he was not the kind of man whose conscience
would be sensitive in such matters. He probably considered that his
brother Ed, having taken his fate in his hands, should expect nothing
from the more timid members of the family who had stuck by the old farm.
But when the elder Clark died, a will was found in which to Samuel's
disgust an undivided half interest in the Field--the best part of the
farm--was left to his eldest son and his heirs.

There is no evidence that Samuel, at the time of his father's death,
ever took any measures, even of the most casual sort, to hunt up this
elder brother or find out if he had left any children. He made some sort
of deal with a younger brother who could not be ignored and continued to
work the old farm, living in his father's house on Swan's Hill. Probably
a long term of undisturbed possession of the farm convinced him that he
was the sole legitimate owner of the property, that the land was
absolutely and wholly his to do with what he would. And so, as we have
seen, in his old age he tried to dispose of the Field to the
market-gardener for five thousand dollars. But the lawyer raised the
obvious objection that the Field could not be sold without Edward's
consent, and of Edward nothing whatsoever was known. Some attempt was
made at this time by John Clark on behalf of his father to trace the
missing Edward--a feeble attempt. He wrote to an army friend in Chicago,
who found evidence that Edward S. Clark, a carpenter, had lived in the
city for five or six years and had moved thence to St. Louis. No trace
of him could be found in St. Louis, where John also wrote to the
postmaster. At that time, it should be remembered, St. Louis was the
port of departure for the little-known West, and possibly Edward and his
family had taken boat up the Missouri and gone on to the distant gold
fields or had merely drifted out into the neighboring prairie country
and stuck in some nook. It was all speculation. Nothing further of
Edward Stanley Clark was ever known by either Samuel or his son John. He
never announced himself to his Eastern relatives.

But Samuel could not sell the Field. Old Adams was altogether too shrewd
to sp