“How did I know you would like to be stared at?” asked he, with a laugh.

Elizabeth blushed and looked grave; to her the matter seemed too terrible.

“I might have said something,” she mused, sadly.

“And if it had been to the wrong person,” suggested Sandy;—­“for they a’n’t very fond of him, I guess.”

“Who is he, then?  I never heard.”

“He has been shut up in that building now a’most five year, Elizabeth,” said Sandy, leaning on the handle of the spade he had struck into the ground with emphasis.

“Five years!”

“Summer heat, and winter cold.  All the same to him.  No wonder he sticks, as if he was glued, to the window, now he’s got one worth the glass.”

“Oh, let him!”

“If he could walk about the garden, it would be better yet.”

“Won’t he, Sandy?”

“I can’t say.  He’s here for some terrible piece of work, they say.  And nobody knows what his name is, I guess,—­hereabouts, I mean.  I never heard it.  He won’t be out very quick.  But let him look out, any way.”

“Oh, Sandy!  I might have said something that would have hindered!”

“Didn’t I know you wouldn’t for the world?  That’s why I told you.”

The gardener now went on with his spading.  But Elizabeth’s work seemed finished for this day.  Above them stood the prisoner.  He guessed not what gentle hearts were pitiful with thinking of his sorrow.

The next day the prisoner was not at the window, nor the next day, nor the next.  Sandy was bold enough to ask the keeper, Mr. Laval, what was the meaning of it, and learned that the man was ill, and not likely to recover.  Sandy told Elizabeth, and they agreed in thinking that for the poor creature death was probably the least of evils.

But the day following that on which they came to this conclusion, the sick man appeared before Sandy’s astonished eyes.  He was under the keeper’s care.  The physician had ordered this change of air, and they came to the garden at an hour when there was least danger of meeting other persons in the walks.

Sandy had much to tell Elizabeth when he saw her next.  She trembled while he told her how he thought that he had seen a ghost when the keeper came leading the prisoner, whose pale face, tall figure, feeble step, appeared to have so little to do with human nature and affairs.

“Did he seem to care for the flowers? did he take any?” she asked.

“No,—­he would not touch them.  The keeper offered him whatever he would choose.  He desired nothing.  But he looked at all, he saw everything,—­even the beds of vegetables,” Sandy said.

“Did he seem pleased?” Elizabeth again asked.

“Pleased!” exclaimed Sandy.  “That’s for you and me,—­not a man that’s been shut up these five years.  No,—­he didn’t look pleased.  I don’t know how he looked; don’t ask me; ’tisn’t pleasant to think of.”