and added with a frank laugh,--"But we
all want our chance to try!"

"What will you do with your money?" Adelle asked.

The young man threw back his head and drew in a long breath as if he
were trying to focus in one desire all the aspirations of his thirsty
soul, which now he could satisfy.

"I'll take a suite at the Palace and have the best booze money can buy!"
he said with a careless laugh.

"No, don't do that!" Adelle protested earnestly, thinking of Archie.
"You won't get much out of your money that way."

"I was joking," the young man laughed. "No, I don't mean to be any booze
fighter. There's too much else to do."

He confessed to his new cousin some of the aspirations that had been
thwarted by his present condition,--all his longing for education,
experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man,
bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a
curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not
be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American
note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money
would enable him to attain "equality" with the land's best.

"When I see some folks swelling around in motor-cars and spending their
money in big hotels like it was dirt, and doing nothin' to earn it, and
I know those who are starving or slaving every day just to live in a
mean, dirty little way--why, it makes me hot in the collar. It makes me
'most an anarchist. The world's wrong the way things are divided up!" he
exclaimed, forgetting that he was about to take his seat with the
privileged.

"Well," Adelle mused dubiously, "now you'll have a chance to do what you
want and be 'on top' as you call it."

"Mos' likely then," the mason turned on himself with an ironic laugh, "I
shan't want to do one thing I think I do now!"

"I hope it won't change you," Adelle remarked quite frankly.

The quality that had first attracted her to the young man was his manly
independence and ability to do good, honest, powerful work. If he should
lose this vital expression of himself and his zest for action, the half
of Clark's Field would scarcely pay him for the loss.

"Don't you worry about me, cousin!" he laughed back confidently. "But
here we are gassin' away as if I were already a millionaire. And most
likely it's nothin' more than a pipe-dream, all told."

"No, it's true!" Adelle protested.

"I'll wait to see it