"Why, yes," he repeated, with the pleased bright look on his face which people get when they dredge up any lost thing from the past, "yes, let me see–I was just a kid–about 1913 or 1914–I remember father saying something about it to Uncle John or somebody, before he remembered I was in the room–then the Judge was here and he and father–I thought they were having a row, their voices got so high–they were talking about money."

"Thanks," I said.

"Welcome," he said, with a slightly puzzled smile on his face, and moved to the couch to let the parcels cascade to the soft softness.

"Well," Anne said, looking at me, "you might at least have the grace to tell him why you asked the question."

"Sure," I said. And I turned to Adam: "I wanted to find out for Governor Stark."

"Politics," he said, and the jaw closed like a trap.

"Yes, politics," Anne said, smiling a little sourly.

"Well, thank God, I don't have to mess with 'em," Adam said. "Nowadays, anyway." But he said it almost lightly. Which surprised me. Then added, "What the hell if Stark knows about the Judge being broke. It was more than twenty years ago. And there's no la against being broke. What the hell."

"Yeah, what the hell," Anne said, and looking at me, gave that not unsour smile.

"And what the hell are you doing?" Adam demanded laughing, and grabbed her by the arm and shook her. "Standing there when the grub needs cooking. Get the lead out, Sour-puss, and get going!" He shoved her toward the couch, where the packages were heaped.

She bent to scoop up a lot of packages, and he whacked her across the backsides and said, "Get going!" And laughed. And she laughed, too, with pleasure, and everything was forgotten, for it wasn't often that Adam opened up and laughed a lot, and then he could be free and gay, and you knew you would have a wonderful time.

We had a wonderful time. While Anne cooked, and I fixed drinks and set the table, Adam snatched the sheet off the piano (they kept the thing in tune out there and it wasn't a bad one even yet) and beat hell out of it till the house bulged and rocked. He even took three good highballs before dinner instead of one. Then we ate, and he beat on the piano some more, playing stuff like "Roses Are Blooming in Picardy" and "Three O'Clock in the Morning," while Anne and I danced and cavorted, or he would mush it up and Anne would hum in my ear and we would sway sweet and slow like young poplars in the slightest breeze. Then he jump up from the piano bench and whistling "Beautiful Lady," snatched her out of my arms and swung her wide in a barrel-house waltz while she leaned back on his arm with her head back and eyes closed for a swoon, and with right arm outstretched, held delicately the hem of her fluttering skirt.

But Adam was a good dancer, even clowning. It was because he was a natural, for he ever got any practice any more. And never had taken his share. Not of anything except work. And he could have had them crawling to him and asking for it. And once in about five years he would break out in a kind of wild, free, exuberant gaiety like a levee break streaming out to snatch the trees and brush up by the roots, and you would be the trees and brush. You and everybody around him. His eyes would gleam wild and he would gesture wide with an excess of energy bursting from deep inside. You would think of a great turbine or dynamo making a million revs a minute and boiling out the power and about to jump loose from its moorings. When he gestured with those strong, long, supple white hands, it was a mixture of Svengali and an atom-busting machine. You expected to see blue sparks. When he got like that they wouldn't have had the strength to crawl to him and ask for it. They would just be ready to fall back and roll over where they were. Only it didn't do them any good.

But that didn't come often. And didn't last long. The cold would settle down and the lid would go on right quick.

Adam didn't have the power on that night. He was just ready to smile and laugh and joke and beat the piano and swing his sister in the barrel-house waltz while the fire leaped on the big hearth and the high face gazed down from the massy gold frame and the wind moved in off the sea and in the dark outside clashed the magnolia leaves.

 Not that in that room, with the fire crackling and the music, we heard the tiny clashing of the magnolia leaves the wind made. I heard it later, in bed upstairs in the dark, through the open window, the tiny dry clashing of the leaves, and thought, _Were we happy tonight because we were happy or because once, a long time back, we had been happy? Was our happiness tonight like the light of the moon, which does not come from the moon, for the moon is cold and has no light of its own, but is reflected light from far away? __I turned that notion around in my head and tried to make a nice tidy little metaphor out of it, but the metaphor wouldn't work out, for you have to be the cold, dead, wandering moon, and you have to have been the sum, too, way back, and how the hell can you be both the sun and the moon? It was not consistent. It was not tidy. _To hell with it__, I though, listening to the leaves.

Then thought, _Well, anyway, I know now Irwin was broke__.

I had dug that much up out of the past, and tomorrow I would leave Burden's Landing and the past, and go back to the present. So I went back to the present.

Which was: Tiny Duffy sitting in a great soft leather chair with his great soft hams flowing over the leather, and his great soft belly flowing over his great soft hams, and a long cigarette holder with a burning cigarette stuck jauntily out from one side of his face (the cigarette holder was a recent innovation, imitated from a gentleman who was the most prominent member of the political party to which Tiny Duffy gave his allegiance) and his great soft face flowing down over his collar, an a diamond ring on his finger, big as a walnut–for all of that was Tiny Duffy, who was not credible but true and who had obviously consulted the cartoons by _Harper's Weekly__ in the files of the 'nineties to discover exactly what the successful politician should be, do, and wear.

Which was: Tiny Duffy saying, "Jesus, and the Boss gonna put six million bucks in a hospital–six million bucks." And lying back in the chair, eyes dreamily on the coffered ceiling, head wreathed in the baby-blue smoke from the cigarette, murmuring dreamily, "Six million bucks."

And Sadie Burke saying, "Yeah, six million bucks, and he ain't planning for you to get your fingers on a penny of it."

"I could fix it up for him in the Fourth District. MacMurfee still got it sewed up down there. Him and Gummy Larson. But throw that hospital contract to Gummy and–"

"And Gummy would sell out MacMurfee. Is that it?"

"Well, now–I wouldn't put it that way. Gummy'd sort of talk reason into MacMurfee, you might say."

"And would sort of slip you a slice. Is that it, Tiny?"

"I ain't talking about me. I'm talking about Gummy. He'd handle MacMurfee for the Boss."

"The Boss don't need anybody to handle MacMurfee. He'll handle MacMurfee when the time comes and it will be permanent. For God's sake, Tiny, you known the Boss as long as you have and you still don't know him. Don't you know he'd rather bust a man than buy him? Wouldn't he, Jack?"

"How do I know?" I said. But I did know.

At least, I knew that the Boss was out to bust a man named Judge Irwin. And I was elected to do the digging.

So I went back to the digging.

But the next day, before I got back at the digging, a call came from Anne Stanton, "Smarty," she said, smarty, you thought you were so smart!"

I heard he laughing, way off somewhere at the end of the line, but the tingling came over the wire, and I thought of her face laughing.

"Yes, smarty! you found from Adam how Judge Irwin was broke a long time ago, but I've found out something too!"