ld thus obtain the priceless bulbs.

Van Baerle was sent to the prison of Loewenstein, and in February 1673,
when he was thinking his tulips lost for ever, he heard Rosa's voice.
Gryphus had applied for the gaolership of Loewenstein, and had been
appointed.

Nothing could persuade him that if Van Baerle was not a traitor he was
certainly in league with the devil, like all learned men, and he did all
he could to mortify and annoy his prisoner. But Rosa would come every
night when her father, stupefied by gin, was asleep, and talk to
Cornelius through the barred grating of his cell door.

He taught her to read, and together they planned how the tulip bulbs
should be brought to flower. One bulb Rosa was to plant, the second Van
Baerle would cultivate in his cell with soil placed in an old water jug,
and the third was to be kept in reserve.

Once more hope revived in Baerle's mind, but Rosa often suffered
vexation because Cornelius thought more of his black tulip than of her.

In the meantime Boxtel, under the assumed name of Jacob Gisels, had made
his way to Loewenstein in pursuit of the bulbs, and had ingratiated
himself with Gryphus, offering to marry his daughter. Rosa's tulip had
to be guarded from Gisels, who was always spying on her movements. She
kept it in her room for safety, but Boxtel had a key made, and the day
the tulip flowered, and arose a spotless black, he resolved to take it
at once, and rush to Haarlem and claim the prize.

The day came. Rosa described to Cornelius the wonderful black tulip, and
they drew up a letter to the president of the Horticultural Society at
Haarlem, begging him to come and fetch the wonderful flower.

That very night while Cornelius and Rosa rejoiced as lovers--for now
even Rosa was convinced of the prisoner's love for her--over the
happiness of the flowering tulip, Boxtel crept into her room, and
carried off the black tulip to Haarlem.

As for Van Baerle, he was beside himself with the rage of desperation
when Rosa told him that the black tulip had been stolen. Rosa, bent on
recovering the tulip, and certain in her own mind as to the thief,
hastened away from Loewenstein the next day without a word, Gryphus was
mad when he learnt his daughter was nowhere to be found, and put down
the mysterious disappearance of Jacob Gisels and Rosa to the work of the
devil, and was convinced that Van Baerle was the devil's agent.

The third day after the theft Gryphus, armed with a sti