od
result should have come about in a moment when no one looked for
it,--he giving up his task with vexation, she accepting it with
humility, and both working together thereafter, the most helpful of
friends.

It required not many seasons for Elizabeth to prove her skill and
diligence in the culture of this garden-ground,--not many for the
transformation of square, awkward beds into a mass of bloom. How did
those flowers delight the generous heart! With what particular splendor
shone the house of Montier through all the summer season! The ladies
now began to think about bouquets, and knew where they could find them.
From this same blessed nook the Governor's table was daily supplied
with its most beautiful ornament. Men tenderly disposed smiled on the
young face that from under the broad-brimmed garden-hat smiled back on
them. Some deemed her fairer than the flowers she cared for.

One day in the spring of the year that brought her thirteenth birthday,
Elizabeth ran down through the morning mist, and plucked the first
spring flower. She stayed but to gather the beauty whose budding she
had long watched; no one must rob her mother of this gift.

She carried off the prize before the gaze of one who had also hailed it
in the bleak, drear dawn. This was not the gardener;--and there was
neither man, woman, nor child in sight, during the swift run;--no
freeman; but a prisoner in an upper room of the prison. Through its
grated window, the only one on that side of the building, he had that
morning for the first time looked upon the island which had held him
long a prisoner.

Since daybreak he had stood before the window. The evening before, the
stone had been rolled away from the door of his sepulchre,--not by an
angel, neither by force of the resistless Life-spirit within, shall it
be said? Who knows that it was _not_ by an angel? who shall aver it was
_not_ by the resistless Life? At least, he was here,--brought from the
cell he had occupied these five years,--brought from the arms of Death.
His window below had looked on a dead stone-wall; this break in the
massive masonry gave heaven and earth to him.

The first ray of daylight saw him dragging his feeble body to the
window. He did not remove from that post till the rain was over,--nor
then, except for a moment. As the clouds rose from the sea, he watched
them. How strange was the aspect of all things! Thus, while he had
lived and not beheld, these trees had waved, th