"I wonder it has gone on as long as it has," he said to himself; though
it seemed unreasonable that his few moments with her, and the story told
him by the Clerk of the Court, should enable him to come to any definite
conclusion. But at eighty-odd Judge Carcasson was a Solon and a Solomon
in one. He had seen life from all angles, and he was not prepared to give
any virtue or the possession of any virtue too much rope; while nothing
in life surprised him.
"How would you like to be a judge?" he asked of Zoe, suddenly taking her
hand in his. A kinship had been at once established between them, so
little has age, position, and intellect to do with the natural
gravitations of human nature.
She did not answer direct, and that pleased him. "If I were a judge I
should have no jails," she said. "What would you do with the bad people?"
he asked.
"I would put them alone on a desert island, or out at sea in a little
boat, or out on the prairies without a horse, so that they'd have to work
for their lives."
"Oh, I see! If M. Fille here set fire to a house, you would drop him on
the prairie far away from everything and everybody and let him 'root hog
or die'?"
"Don't you think it would kill him or cure him?" she asked whimsically.
The Judge laughed, his eyes twinkling. "That's what they did when the
world was young, dear ma'm'selle.
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