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.