Part 4 (1/2)

”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 s.p.a.ce; 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.

”I would make my father be a miller,” she replied. ”But he is a miller, I hear.”

”But he is so many other things--so many. If he was only a miller we should have more of him. He is at home only a little. If I get up early enough in the morning, or if I am let stay up at night late enough, I see him; but that is not enough--is it, mother?” she added with a sudden sense that she had gone too far, that she ought not to say this perhaps.

The woman's face had darkened for an instant, and irritation showed in her eyes, but by an effort of the will she controlled herself.

”Your father knows best what he can do and can't do,” she said evenly.

”But you would not let a man judge for himself, would you, ma'm'selle?”

asked the old inquisitor. ”You would judge for the man what was best for him to do?”

”I would judge for my father,” she replied. ”He is too good a man to judge for himself.”

”Well, there's a lot of sense in that, ma'm'selle philosophe,” answered Judge Carca.s.son. ”You would make the good idle, and make the bad work.

The good you would put in a mill to watch the stones grind, and the bad you would put on a prairie alone to make the grist for the grinding.

Ma'm'selle, we must be friends--is it not so?”

”Haven't we always been friends?” the young girl asked with the look of a visionary suddenly springing up in her eyes.

Here was temperament indeed. She pleased Judge Carca.s.son greatly. ”But yes, always, and always, and always,” he replied. Inwardly he said to himself, ”I did not see that at first. It is her father in her.

”Zoe!” said her mother reprovingly.

CHAPTER V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY

A moment afterwards the Judge, as he walked down the street still arm in arm with the Clerk of the Court, said: ”That child must have good luck, or she will not have her share of happiness. She has depths that are not deep enough.” Presently he added, ”Tell me, my Clerk, the man--Jean Jacques--he is so much away--has there never been any talk about--about.”

”About--monsieur le juge?” asked M. Fille rather stiffly. ”For instance--about what?”

”For instance, about a man--not Jean Jacques.”

The lips of the Clerk of the Court tightened. ”Never at any time--till now, monsieur le juge.”

”Ah--till now!”

The Clerk of the Court blushed. What he was about to say was difficult, but he alone of all the world guessed at the tragedy which was hovering over Jean Jacques' home. By chance he had seen something on an afternoon of three days before, and he had fled from it as a child would fly from a demon. He was a purist at law, but he was a purist in life also, and not because the flush of youth had gone and his feet were on the path which leads into the autumn of a man's days. The thing he had seen had been terribly on his mind, and he had felt that his own judgment was not sufficient for the situation, that he ought to tell someone.

The Cure was the only person who had come to his mind when he became troubled to the point of actual mental agony. But the new curb, M.

Savry, was not like the Old Cure, and, besides, was it not stepping between the woman and her confessional? Yet he felt that something ought to be done. It never occurred to him to speak to Jean Jacques. That would have seemed so brutal to the woman. It came to him to speak to Carmen, but he knew that he dared not do so. He could not say to a woman that which must shame her before him, she who had kept her head so arrogantly high--not so much to him, however, as to the rest of the world. He had not the courage; and yet he had fear lest some awful thing would at any moment now befall the Manor Cartier. If it did, he would feel himself to blame had he done nothing to stay the peril. So far he was the only person who could do so, for he was the only person who knew!