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. There was no time to build jails.
Alone on the prairie--a separate prairie for every criminal--that would
take a lot of space; but the idea is all right. It mightn't provide the
proper degree of punishment, however. But that is being too particular.
Alone on the prairie for punishment--well, I should like to see it
tried."

He remembered that saying of his long after, while yet he was alive,
and a tale came to him from the prairies which made his eyes turn
more intently towards a land that is far off, where the miserable
miscalculations and mistakes of this world are readjusted. Now he was
only conscious of a primitive imagination looking out of a young girl's
face, and making a bridge between her understanding and his own.

"What else would you do if you were a judge?" he asked presently.