Though he had been so long a prisoner, he showed in his person self-respect and dignity of nature. His hair and beard were grown long; many a gray thread shone in his chestnut locks; his mouth was a firm feature; his eyes quiet, but not the mildest; his forehead very ample; he was lofty in stature;--outside the prison, a freeman, his presence would have been commanding. But he needed the free air for his lungs, and the light to surround him,--the light to set him in relief, the sense of life to compel him to stand out in his own powerful individuality, distinct from every other living man.
By-and-by, while he stood at the window, looking forth upon the strange scenes before him, this new heaven and new earth, the landscape became alive. The first human creature he had seen outside his cell since he became an inmate of this prison appeared before his eyes,--the young girl skipping through the garden till she came to the flower-bed and plucked the scarlet blossom. If she had been a spirit or an angel, he could hardly have beheld her with greater surprise.
She was singing when she came. He thought he recognized that voice,--that it was the same he had often heard from the cell below. Many a time the horrible stillness of that cell had been broken by the sound of a child's voice, which, like a spirit, swept unhindered through the walls,--an essence of life, and a power.
It was but a moment that she paused before the flower; she plucked it, and was gone. But his eyes could follow her. She did not really, with her disappearing, vanish. And yet this vision had not to him the significance of the bow seen in the cloud, whose interpreter, and whose interpretation, was the Almighty Love.
All day he stood before that window. The keeper hailed the symptom. The Governor was satisfied with the report. Towards sunset the rain was over, and with the sun came forth abundant indications of the island life. The gardener walked among the garden-beds and measured his morrow's work, calculating time and means within his reach,--and vouchsafing some attention to the flower-garden, as was evident when he paused before it and made his thoughtful survey. The prisoner saw him smile when he took hold of the broken stalk which had been flower-crowned. And Sandy saw the prisoner.