looked after him then, too, and looked in upon him in the clear gleam of a star calmingly shining through the bars. When the dreary winter had passed, Andrew found that Hoity Toity had given him another gift. His bird had brought him a seed in return for his oatcake, and this seed was opening into a flower. As the weeks went by, it gained three blossoms, and as they pensively smiled upon him in his prison, Andrew pleased himself by calling them Jean and little Jean and little Andrew. In the spring Andrew's bird brought its mate to visit him, and then, so long as he had any crumbs of oatcake left to give them, the two birds used to go backwards and forwards like shuttles between their nest and his cell with, or in quest of, food for their young. He often stinted himself for the sake of their company. But at last the birds went away, and his flower faded, and the dreary winter came again. Hoity Toity, however, did not allow Andrew to be desolate. The little daughter of the jailer came down one day with her gruff father to see the squalid prisoner, and took such compassion on him that a friendship sprang up between them. She often came again, and he wiled away the heavy hours when she was away in carving rough little toys for her out of the half rotten wood with which the floor of his cell was littered, and thanks to her, the gruff jailer, who was not gruff to her, but almost her slave, granted poor Andrew such indulgences as he durst. Andrew was still quartered in the same cell, but the jailer allowed him to come out now and then and walk with the little girl in the castle yard. His food was more plentiful, and in the bitterest winter weather he was allowed a fire; and when the spring came back again the order for his release came with it. The little girl helped him to trim his beard and wash and mend his clothes, and kissed and cried over him when he bade her goodbye, with a heart full of joy because he was returning to those who had missed him so long from the moorland cottage. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON. |