nd guilders."

"No one ever enters the garden but myself."

"Thank you, thank you, my dear Rosa. All the joy of my life has still to
come from you."

And as the lips of Van Baerle approached the grating with the same ardor
as the day before, and as, moreover, the hour for retiring had struck,
Rosa drew back her head, and stretched out her hand.

In this pretty little hand, of which the coquettish damsel was
particularly proud, was the bulb.

Cornelius kissed most tenderly the tips of her fingers. Did he do so
because the hand kept one of the bulbs of the great black tulip, or
because this hand was Rosa's? We shall leave this point to the decision
of wiser heads than ours.

Rosa withdrew with the other two suckers, pressing them to her heart.

Did she press them to her heart because they were the bulbs of the great
black tulip, or because she had them from Cornelius?

This point, we believe, might be more readily decided than the other.

However that may have been, from that moment life became sweet, and
again full of interest to the prisoner.

Rosa, as we have seen, had returned to him one of the suckers.

Every evening she brought to him, handful by handful, a quantity of
soil from that part of the garden which he had found to be the best, and
which, indeed, was excellent.

A large jug, which Cornelius had skilfully broken, did service as a
flower-pot. He half filled it, and mixed the earth of the garden with
a small portion of dried river mud, a mixture which formed an excellent
soil.

Then, at the beginning of April, he planted his first sucker in that
jug.

Not a day passed on which Rosa did not come to have her chat with
Cornelius.

The tulips, concerning whose cultivation Rosa was taught all the
mysteries of the art, formed the principal topic of the conversation;
but, interesting as the subject was, people cannot always talk about
tulips.

They therefore began to chat also about other things, and the
tulip-fancier found out to his great astonishment what a vast range of
subjects a conversation may comprise.

Only Rosa had made it a habit to keep her pretty face invariably six
inches distant from the grating, having perhaps become distrustful of
herself.

There was one thing especially which gave Cornelius almost as much
anxiety as his bulbs--a subject to which he always returned--the
dependence of Rosa on her father.

Indeed, Van Baerle's happiness depended on the whim of this man. He
m