n't fit to come back when
his term is over. I don't believe it's going to do much for him merely
to keep the laws he's been chucked under, against his will, though he's
got to keep 'em, or they'll know the reason why."

Lydia wondered who They were. She thought They might be brutal wardens
and assembled before her, in a terrifying battalion, the strait-jackets
and tortures she'd found in some of the older English novels.

"So I said to the men: 'We've got to govern ourselves. We haven't got a
damned word'"--really abashed he looked at Anne--"I beg your pardon. 'We
haven't got a word to say in this government we're under; but say we
have. Say the only thing we can do is to give no trouble, fine
ourselves, punish ourselves if we do. The worst thing that can happen to
us,' I said, 'is to hate law. Well, the best law we've got is prison
law. It's the only law that's going to touch us now. Let's love it as if
it were our mother. And if it isn't tough enough, let's make it tougher.
Let's vote on it, and publish our votes in this paper.'"

"I was surprised," said his father, "that so much plain speaking was
allowed."

"Advertising! Of course they allowed us," said Jeff. "It advertised us
outside. Advertised the place. Officials got popular. Inside conduct
went up a hundred per cent, just as it would in school. Men are only
boys. As soon as the fellows got it into their heads we were trying to
work out a republic in a jail, they were possessed by it. I wish you
could see the letters that were sent in to the paper. You couldn't
publish 'em, some of 'em. Too illiterate. But they showed you what was
inside the fellows. Sometimes they were as smug as a prayer-meeting."

"Did this man write?" Lydia asked scornfully, with a distaste she didn't
propose to lessen. "The one you're going to do the book about?"

"Oh, he's a crook," said Jeff indifferently. "Crook all through. If we'd
been trying to build up a monarchy instead of a republic he'd have
hatched up a scheme for looting the crown jewels. Or if we'd been
founding a true and only church, he'd have suggested a trick for melting
the communion plate."

"And you want to write his life!" said Lydia's look.

But Jeff cared nothing about her look. He was, with a retrospective eye,
regarding the work he had been doing, work that had perhaps saved his
reason as well as bought his freedom. Now he was spreading it out and
letting them consider it, not for praise, but because he trus