t, she
took stern vengeance of herself.

General Saterges recognized at one glance the evidences of a strong
and determined spirit. When she had crossed the room and stood
before him, he requested her to be seated,--and it was the first
time that he had made such request of such visitor.

Declining the civility, Elizabeth stood, and told her errand. She
had come across the ocean, she said, to plead the cause of a poor
prisoner who was dying under sentence of the law. She paused a moment,
having made this statement, and was answered by a nod. Prisoners
often died without reprieve, he seemed to be aware. This cold
civility warmed the petitioner's speech. Her mother would have been
satisfied, Madeline Desperiers would have been overwhelmed with grief
and horror, to have heard this young girl's testimony in regard to
prison-life. The old man, as he listened, sighed unconsciously,
--for not every nerve in him was strung to cruelty. To one of his
restless career what image of life more dreadful could have been
presented than was in this testimony? To be shut away from human
society so many years, patient, resigned, receiving the few comforts
yet allowed him!--to live on, pure in spirit, lofty in thought,
hoping still in God and man! The old warrior in self-defence,
because she brought the case too vividly, the life too forcibly
before him, broke through the words she was speaking, interrupting
her.

"Who is this person?" he asked.

"Stephen Cordier," was the answer. Without hesitation, even proudly,
she spoke it. She had compelled him to ask the name!

"And who are you?" he asked; and if he felt displeasure, as if his
sympathy, of which he was so chary, had been stolen from him, he did
not allow it to appear.

"Elizabeth Montier," she replied.

"That is no answer. What is a name, if it conveys no meaning to my
mind?"

"I am the daughter of Adolphus and Pauline Montier. My father is a
drummer in the military band of Foray. He is also present keeper of
the prison where Stephen Cordier is confined."

"Very well. Does he know your errand here?"

"He does not. He let me come to this country,--it is his native land,
and my mother's,--he let me come because in his heart he has always
loved his country, and he has never been able to return. We were to
have come back together. But there was an opportunity for me. I
dared not wait. So I am here,--and for nothing, Sir, but this man's
liberty."

Those last words she spok