fearful lest her bit of news fall from the other pair of lips first.
"Well, he's blind--stone blind. He couldn't see a dollar bill--not if
you shook it right before his eyes."

"Sho! you don't say!" Mrs. McGuire dropped the wet sheet back into the
basket and came to the fence on her side concernedly. "Now, ain't that
too bad?"

"Yes, ain't it? An' he so kind, an' now so blind! It jest makes me
sick." Susan whipped open the twisted folds of a wet towel. Susan
seldom stopped her work to talk. "But I saw it comin' long ago. An' he
did, too, poor man!"

Mrs. McGuire lifted a bony hand to her face and tucked a flying wisp
of hair behind her right ear.

"Then if he saw it comin', why couldn't he do somethin' to stop it?"
she demanded.

[Illustration: SUSAN BETTS TALKING WITH MRS. MCGUIRE OVER THE BACKYARD
FENCE]

"I don't know. But he couldn't. Dr. Chandler said he couldn't. An'
they had a man up from Boston--one of them eye socialists what doesn't
doctor anythin' but eyes--an' he said he couldn't."

Keith, on his knees before the beet-bed adjoining the clothes-yard,
sat back on his heels and eyed the two women with frowning interest.

He knew old Mr. Harrington. So did all the boys. Never was there a