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.