alluringly from the bushes at the left, and a robin twittered from a
tree branch on the right. But the boy neither saw nor heard--and when
before had Keith Burton failed to respond to a furred or feathered
challenge like that?

To-day there was an air of dogged determination about even the way he
set one foot before the other. He had the air of one who sees his goal
ahead and cannot reach it soon enough. Yet when Keith arrived at the
sagging, open gate before the Harrington cottage, he stopped short as
if the gate were closed; and his next steps were slow and hesitant.
Walking on the grass at the edge of the path he made no sound as he
approached the stoop, on which sat an old man.

At the steps, as at the gate, Keith stopped and waited, his gaze on
the motionless figure in the rocking-chair. The old man sat with hands
folded on his cane-top, his eyes apparently looking straight ahead.

Slowly the boy lifted his right arm and waved it soundlessly. He
lifted his left--but there was no waving flourish. Instead it fell
impotently almost before it was lifted. On the stoop the old man still
sat motionless, his eyes still gazing straight ahead.

Again the boy hesitated; then, with an elaborately careless air, he
shuffled his feet on the gravel walk and called cheerfully:

"Hullo, Uncle Joe."

"Hullo! Oh, hullo! It's Keith Burton, ain't it?"

The old head turned with the vague indecision of the newly blind, and