Dawn | Page 4

to fix," reiterated the boy, in a yet louder tone.
"There, there, my boy, you don't have to shout." The old man shifted uneasily hi his seat. "I ain't deaf. I'm only--I suppose you know, Keith, what's come to me in my old age."
"Yes, sir, I--I do." The boy hitched a little nearer to the two ill- shod feet on the floor near him. "And--and I wanted to ask you. Yours hurt a lot, didn't they?--I mean, your eyes; they--they ached, didn't they, before they--they got--blind?" He spoke eagerly, almost hopefully.
The old man shook his head.
"No, not much. I s'pose I ought to be thankful I was spared that."
The boy wet his dry lips and swallowed.
"But, Uncle Joe, 'most always, I guess, when--when folks are going to be blind, they--they DO ache, don't they?"
Again the old man stirred restlessly.
"I don't know. I only know about--myself."
"But--well, anyhow, it never comes till you're old--real old, does it?" Keith's voice vibrated with confidence this time.
"Old? I ain't so very old. I'm only seventy-five," bridled Harrington resentfully. "Besides anyhow, the doctor said age didn't have nothin' ter do with this kind of blindness. It comes ter young folks, real young folks, sometimes."
"Oh-h!" The boy wet his lips and swallowed again a bit convulsively. With eyes fearful and questioning he searched the old man's face. Twice he opened his mouth as if to speak; but each time he closed it again with the words left unsaid. Then, with a breathless rush, very much like desperation, he burst out:
"But it's always an awful long time comin', isn't it? Blindness is. It's years and years before it really gets here, isn't it?"
"Hm-m; well, I can't say. I can only speak for myself, Keith."
"Yes, sir, I know, sir; and that's what I wanted to ask--about you," plunged on Keith feverishly. "When did you notice it first, and what was it?"
The old man drew a long sigh.
"Why, I don't know as I can tell, exactly. 'T was quite a spell comin' on--I know that; and't wasn't much of anything at first. 'T was just that I couldn't see ter read clear an' distinct. It was all sort of blurred."
"Kind of run together?" Just above his breath Keith asked the question.
"Yes, that's it exactly. An' I thought somethin' ailed my glasses, an' so I got some new ones. An' I thought at first maybe it helped. But it didn't. Then it got so that't wa'n't only the printin' ter books an' papers that was blurred, but ev'rything a little ways off was in a fog, like, an' I couldn't see anything real clear an' distinct."
"Oh, but things--other things--don't look a mite foggy to me," cried the boy.
"'Course they don't! Why should they? They didn't to me--once," retorted the man impatiently. "But now--" Again he left a sentence unfinished.
"But how soon did--did you get--all blind, after that?" stammered the boy, breaking the long, uncomfortable silence that had followed the old man's unfinished sentence.
"Oh, five or six months--maybe more. I don't know exactly. I know it came, that's all. I guess if 't was you it wouldn't make no difference HOW it came, if it came, boy." "N-no, of course not," chattered Keith, springing suddenly to his feet. "But I guess it isn't coming to me--of course't isn't coming to me! Well, good-bye, Uncle Joe, I got to go now. Good-bye!"
He spoke fearlessly, blithely, and his chin was at a confident tilt. He even whistled as he walked down the hill. But in his heart--in his heart Keith knew that beside him that very minute stalked that shadowy, intangible creature that had dogged his footsteps ever since his fourteenth birthday-gift from his father; and he knew it now by name--The Great Terror.


CHAPTER II
DAD
Keith's chin was still high and his gaze still straight ahead when he reached the foot of Harrington Hill. Perhaps that explained why he did not see the two young misses on the fence by the side of the road until a derisively gleeful shout called his attention to their presence.
"Well, Keith Burton, I should like to know if you're blind!" challenged a merry voice.
The boy turned with a start so violent that the girls giggled again gleefully. "Dear, dear, did we scare him? We're so sorry!"
The boy flushed painfully. Keith did not like girls--that is, he SAID he did not like them. They made him conscious of his hands and feet, and stiffened his tongue so that it would not obey his will. The prettier the girls were, the more acute was his discomfiture. Particularly, therefore, did he dislike these two girls--they were the prettiest of the lot. They were Mazie Sanborn and her friend Dorothy Parkman.
Mazie was the daughter of the town's richest manufacturer, and Dorothy was her cousin from Chicago, who made such long visits to her Eastern