the prison was standing, in
the darkest corner of his cell.

Useless labour of so many years! such sweet hopes crushed; his discovery
was, after all, to lead to naught, just as his own career was to be cut
short. Here, in his prison, there was not a trace of vegetation, not an
atom of soil, not a ray of sunshine.

At this thought Cornelius fell into a gloomy despair, from which he was
only aroused by an extraordinary circumstance.

What was this circumstance?

We shall inform the reader in our next chapter.

Chapter 10. The Jailer's Daughter

On the same evening Gryphus, as he brought the prisoner his mess,
slipped on the damp flags whilst opening the door of the cell, and fell,
in the attempt to steady himself, on his hand; but as it was turned the
wrong way, he broke his arm just above the wrist.

Cornelius rushed forward towards the jailer, but Gryphus, who was not
yet aware of the serious nature of his injury, called out to him,--

"It is nothing: don't you stir."

He then tried to support himself on his arm, but the bone gave way; then
only he felt the pain, and uttered a cry.

When he became aware that his arm was broken, this man, so harsh to
others, fell swooning on the threshold, where he remained motionless and
cold, as if dead.

During all this time the door of the cell stood open and Cornelius found
himself almost free. But the thought never entered his mind of profiting
by this accident; he had seen from the manner in which the arm was bent,
and from the noise it made in bending, that the bone was fractured, and
that the patient must be in great pain; and now he thought of nothing
else but of administering relief to the sufferer, however little
benevolent the man had shown himself during their short interview.

At the noise of Gryphus's fall, and at the cry which escaped him, a
hasty step was heard on the staircase, and immediately after a lovely
apparition presented itself to the eyes of Cornelius.

It was the beautiful young Frisian, who, seeing her father stretched on
the ground, and the prisoner bending over him, uttered a faint cry, as
in the first fright she thought Gryphus, whose brutality she well knew,
had fallen in consequence of a struggle between him and the prisoner.

Cornelius understood what was passing in the mind of the girl, at the
very moment when the suspicion arose in her heart.

But one moment told her the true state of the case and, ashamed of her
first thou