By-and-by it happened that the flower-garden was given over to the charge of the girl.  It was natural that she, who had never seen other flower-beds than these, should, aided by the home-recollections of her mother, imagine far prettier,—­that she should dare suggest to Sandy, until his patience and his skill were exhausted,—­that the final good 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, these waters rolled, these clouds gathered,—­grass had grown, and flowers unfolded; for he saw the scarlet bloom before Elizabeth plucked it.  And all this while he had lived like a dead man, unaware!  Not so; but now he remembered not the days, when, conscious of all this life, he had deathly despair in his heart, and stones alone for friends.