So they all spoke to Elizabeth, praising her, confiding in her with loving willingness,—­the Daughter of the Regiment.

The gardener was proud of his assistant, and seemed to enjoy the part she took in his labor.  They worked till noon, Elizabeth stopping hardly a moment to rest.  All this while the prisoner stood watching by his window, and the gardener saw him.  The sight occasioned him a new perplexity, and he gravely considered the subject.  It was a good while before he said to Elizabeth, speaking on conviction, in his usual low and rather mysterious tone,—­

“There’s some one will enjoy it when all’s done.”

“Who is that?” asked she, thinking he meant herself, perhaps.

“One up above,” was the answer.

But though Sandy spoke thus plainly, he did not look toward the prison,—­and the prison was the last place of which Elizabeth was thinking.  It was so long a time since the cell with the window had an occupant, that she was almost unconscious of that gloomy neighborhood.  So, when the gardener explained that it was one up above who would enjoy her work, her eyes instantly sought the celestial heights.  She was thinking of sun, or star, or angel, may-be, and smiling at Sandy’s speech, for sympathy.

He saw her new mistake, and made haste to correct this also.

“Not so high,” said he, cautiously.

Then, but as it seemed of chance, and not of purpose, the eyes of Elizabeth Montier turned toward the prison-wall, and fixed upon that window, the solitary one visible from the garden, and her face flushed in a manner that told her surprise—­when she saw a man behind the iron bars.

“Oh,” said she, looking away quickly, as if conscious of a wrong done, “what made you tell me?”

“I guess you will like to think one shut up like him will take a little pleasure looking at what he can’t get at,” said Sandy, almost sharply,—­replying to something he did not quite understand, the pain and the reproof of Elizabeth’s speech.

“Oh, yes!” she answered, and went on with her work.

But though she might be pleased to think that her labor would answer another and more serious purpose than her own gratification, or that of the pretty flowers, it was something new and strange for the girl to work under this mysterious sense of oversight.

“You have only got to speak the word,” said the gardener, who had perceived her perplexity, and was desirous of bringing her speedily to his view of the case, “just speak, and he will be carried back to his old cell below, t’other side.”

“Will he?”

“Yes,—­sure’s you live, if he troubles you, Miss Elizabeth.  Nobody will think of letting him trouble you.”

“Oh, me!” she exclaimed, quickly, “I should die quicker than have him moved where he couldn’t see the garden.”

“I thought so,” said Sandy, satisfied.

“Did you think I would complain of his standing by his window, Sandy?”