ur, in what seemed to the latter almost a miraculous
performance, and in those hasty minutes they both plainly saw the man's
devotion to his work, his love for the plants he cultivated, and how
thoroughly he was at home in the house and interested in what had taken
place in his enforced absence. He showed them, by his actions, that he
knew how much the plumbago had grown on the trellis, how long the shoots
were that had been made on the layer, and his fingers ran from one mazy
cluster of buds and flowers to another; hard-wooded shrubby stems were
examined for scale, which was carefully removed; and every now and then
he paused and placed his hands on the exact place to raise up some
fragrant plant--lemon verbena or heliotrope--to inhale its sweet odour
and replace it with a sigh of satisfaction.

James Ellis watched the young gardener, expecting moment by moment, and,
in his then frame of mind, almost hoping to see him knock down some pot
on to the tiled floor, or stumble over some flower-stand. But he
watched in vain, and he thought the while that if John Grange, suffering
as he was from that awful infliction, could be so deft and clever there
amongst that varied collection of flowers, his work in the other houses
among melons, pines, cucumbers, tomatoes, and grapes would soon grow
simplicity itself, for, educated as he was by long experience, he would
teach himself to thin grapes by touch, train the fruit-bearing stems of
the cucumber and melon vines, and remove the unnecessary shoots of the
tomatoes with the greatest ease. There would be a hundred things he
could do, and each year he would grow more accustomed to working by
touch. And as James Ellis thought, he, an old gardener, shut his eyes
fast, and, in imagination, saw before him a fresh growing tomato plant,
and beginning at the bottom, felt whether it was stiff and healthy.
Then ran up his fingers past the few leaves to the first great cluster
of large fruit, removed the young shoots which came from the axils of
the leaves, and ran up and up the stem feeling the clusters gradually
growing smaller till higher up there were fully-developed blossoms, and
higher still tufts of buds and tender leaves with their surface covered
with metallic golden down.

He started from his musing to gaze open-eyed at his mistress, who had
touched his arm, and now signed to him to follow her softly back to the
library window, and into the room.

"Why, James Ellis!" she said pe