d never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than
ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old,
and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She
was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie
felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age
threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit
of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in the race for
personal happiness, throwing over the burden of Clark's Field.

At any rate, she was married to William Scarp, a fellow-clerk in Minot
Brothers--wholesale wool. Addie represented that Mr. Scarp was of
excellent Southern blood from somewhere in North Carolina. It is
needless to enter into that nebulous question. He was earning thirty
dollars a week with Minot Brothers when they became engaged and was a
few years younger than his bride. The firm gave him a five-dollar
increase of salary on his marriage, old Savage remarking facetiously
that he believed in rewarding courage. The couple went to live in the
city, and for a year or two they moved nomadically from one
boarding-house or cheap hotel to another. It may be presumed that Addie,
without any clear idea of deceiving, had misled William Scarp in the
matter of Clark's Field--her fixed delusion. The Field made this
marriage, and it was not a happy one. The John Clarks, who still hung on
in the Church Street house with an additional roomer, soon began to
suspect that Addie was not wholly happy in her married life. William had
a quick temper and was very plain-spoken about the "job" that Addie had
"put over him" in the matter of the Clark property, though in fact she
had exercised no more mendacity than women of forty in her position are
wont to do. At one time shortly after the marriage Scarp had an
"understanding" with John Clark about the family estate. When he learned
that the Field could not be sold in the present state of its title and
that such leases as had been made of it to meet taxes and other
obligations tied it up until the opening of the next century, he
expressed himself abusively. Later he suggested that a "syndicate"
should be formed to employ lawyers to straighten out the title and
dispose of the property piecemeal as the leases fell in. It seemed a
brilliant plan, quite modern in its sound, but alas! William, no more
than John, could finance the "syndicate." So the suggestion lapsed