This old man, with hair as white as snow, was in the garden a few days after the opening of this story, looking weird and strange in all that bloom as the old white rose itself; this, being out of flower, was gnarled and rough, having nothing but green leaves to shelter the wren-house with. Some of its branches had died with age, and with his withered and trembling hands the old gardener was attempting to cut the lifeless wood away, a task that went to his heart, for it seemed like digging his own grave. As the old gardener hacked at the rough wood, a man, who had been loitering along the side-walk, stopped, as many a curious person had done before, and looked in upon the pleasant spot, while his hand held lightly by one of the iron rails. It was a white, thin hand, but not of that delicate mould which entire freedom from toil, from the cradle up, leaves to the possessor. Some time in its owner’s life that hand had wrought and toiled, though the palm was soft now and the fingers slender. Something in the face, which looked over the iron railing, seemed to interest the old man, who paused with his knife half through the wood of the rose-bush, and shading his eyes, took a keen survey of its features. As if impelled by some mysterious attraction, the old gardener left his knife sticking in the wood, and moved with slow difficulty toward the iron railing, exactly as if the man had summoned him. Indeed, it almost seemed as if he had done so, for the moment those hobbling steps paused the stranger began to ask questions, which the old man, usually so grim and crusty with persons he did not know, answered with prompt respect. “A beautiful garden this,” said the stranger, gently, meeting the old man’s gaze with a look that had something anxious in it. “Well, yes, I should think so. It has been a growing a good many years, and from the first was rich.” “Are you the gardener?” “What, I? Of course. What else should I be, if not the madam’s gardener? I, who helped her to dig up her first little flower-bed when she wasn’t more than so high.” Here the old man bent down a little, and measured off the empty space about to the level of his rheumatic knees. “But you seem a very old man to work at all.” “Do I? Well, it isn’t any hard work I do. There is a boy out there by the green-house that keeps himself busy obeying my orders, and he gets along pretty well considering.” Here the old man pointed to a tall, stalwart laborer, some thirty-five years of age, who really did the work of the place, and whom the old man considered as a boy. “I’m not so old as to want help, you know,” continued the old gardener; “but the madam——” “I think you said she had lived here from a child?” The stranger’s voice was hoarse and constrained, as he interrupted the old man with this question. The gardener brushed back the gray hair from his ears, as if something in the voice bewildered him; then he answered,