“Pleasant!  What do you mean by pleasant?” asked Pauline, inwardly vexed that her child had suggested the question,—­and yet too just, too kindly disposed, to put the subject away with imperative refusal to consider it.  “I never was in a place so horrid.”

“But if it was our home, and all our things were there,” urged Elizabeth, “it would be different.  It depends on who lives in a house, you know.”

“Yes, that is so; it depends a little, but not entirely.  It would be more than your mother could do to make a pleasant-looking place out of that prison.  You see it is different in the situation, to begin with.  Up where we live the sun is around us all day, if it is anywhere; and then the little rooms are so light!  If you put a flower into them, you think you have a whole garden.  Besides, it’s Home up there, and down here it isn’t.”—­Saying this, Adolphus rose up quickly, as though he had a mind to quit the spot.

“When they select a man to fill Laval’s place, of course they will be careful to choose one as good and kind,” said Pauline, with mild confidence.

“The jailer before him was not good and kind,” remarked her daughter.

“They dismissed him for it,” said Adolphus, quickly.

“But they said the prisoners were half-starved, and abused every way.  It was a good while before it was found out.  That might happen again, and less chance of any one knowing it.  He is so near dead now, it wouldn’t take much to kill him.”

No one replied to this argument.  Pauline and Adolphus talked of other things, and the musician returned to his music.  But all in good time.  Elizabeth was capable of patience, and at last her father said, looking around him to make sure that his remark would have only two listeners,—­

“That prisoner isn’t a man to be talked of about here.  You never heard me mention him.  Laval used to give a—­a—­bad account of him.  He had to be kept alive.”

“Till he heard your music, papa, and was moved up to the room with a window.  Did he tell you that?” asked Elizabeth.

“He said he thought the music did him good,” acknowledged Adolphus.

“May-be it was the same as with Saul when David played for him.  But he does not look like a bad man, papa.  He looks grander than any of our officers.  And he has fought battles, they say.  He is very brave.”

Both Adolphus and Pauline Montier looked at their daughter with the most profound surprise when she spoke thus.  Not merely her words, but her manner of speaking, caused this not agreeable perplexity.  Her emotion was not only too obvious, it was too deep for their understanding.  The mother was the first to speak.

“How did you hear all this, child? I never heard him talked of in this way.  They don’t talk about him at all,—­do they, Adolphus?”

“No,” he answered; but he spoke the word very mildly.  The tone did not indicate a want of sympathy in the compassion of his daughter.