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.

Imprisonment and solitude had told upon the man. He was still young,
and one whom Nature and culture had fitted for no obscure station in
the world. He could, by every evidence he gave, perform no mere
commonplaces of virtue or of vice. The world's ways would not assign
his limitation. He was capable of devising and of executing great
things,--and had proved the power; and to this his presence testified,
even in dilapidation and listlessness.

His repose was the repose of helplessness,--not that of grace or
nature. The opening of this prospect with the daylight had not the