overnor of the island, hearing the condition of the prisoner, this
one remaining man of all whose sentence had been endured within these
walls, had ordered a change of scene for him. His sentence was
imprisonment for life. Did they fear his release by the hands of one
who hears the sighing of the prisoner, and gives to every bondman the
Year of Jubilee? Were they jealous and suspicious of the approach of
Death?

Though he had been so long a prisoner, he showed in his person
self-respect and dignity of nature. His hair and beard were grown long;
many a gray thread shone in his chestnut locks; his mouth was a firm
feature; his eyes quiet, but not the mildest; his forehead very ample;
he was lofty in stature;--outside the prison, a freeman, his presence
would have been commanding. But he needed the free air for his lungs,
and the light to surround him,--the light to set him in relief, the
sense of life to compel him to stand out in his own powerful
individuality, distinct from every other living man.

By-and-by, while he stood at the window, looking forth upon the strange
scenes before him, this new heaven and new earth, the landscape became
alive. The first human creature he had seen outside his cell since he
became an inmate of this prison appeared before his eyes,--the young
girl skipping through the garden till she came to the flower-bed and
plucked the scarlet blossom. If she had been a spirit or an angel, he
could hardly have beheld her with greater surprise.

She was singing when she came. He thought he recognized that
voice,--that it was the same he had often heard from the cell below.
Many a time the horrible stillness of that cell had been broken by the
sound of a child's voice, which, like a spirit, swept unhindered
through the walls,--an essence of life, and a power.

It was but a moment that she paused before the flower; she plucked it,
and was gone. But his eyes could follow her. She did not really, with
her disappearing, vanish. And yet this vision had not to him the
significance of the bow seen in the cloud, whose interpreter, and whose
interpretation, was the Almighty Love.

All day he stood before that window. The keeper hailed the symptom. The
Governor was satisfied with the report. Towards sunset the rain was
over, and with the sun came forth abundant indications of the island
life. The gardener walked among the garden-beds and measured his
morrow's work, calculating time and means within his reach