made fit for something?" mused
Rosewarne aloud.

"Eh? Is it Clem?" She had followed and stood now by his elbow.
"My dear man, he has the brains of the family! Leave Myra to teach him
for a while. See how she's teaching him now, although she doesn't know
it; and that goes on from morning to night."

"Where's the use of it? What's a blind man, at the best?"

"What God means him to be. If God means him to do better--ay, or to see
clearer--than other men, 'tisn't a pair of darkened eyes will prevent it."

"Woman's argument, Hannah. I take you on your own ground--God could cure
the child's eyes; but God doesn't, you see. On the contrary, God chose to
blind 'em. If I'd your religion, it would teach me that Clem's misfortune
was a punishment designed--the sins of the fathers."--

"Ay, you're a hard man, like your father and mine. Haven't I cause to
know it? Hadn't _she_ cause to know it--the mother of that pretty pair?"

"She made her bed."

"--And lies in it, poor soul. But I tell you, John, there's a worse
blindness than Clem's, and you and father have suffered from it.
I mean the blindness of thinking you know God's business so much better
than God that you take it out of His hands. 'Punishment,' you say, and
'sins of the fathers'? I'd have you beware how you visit the past on poor
Clem, or happen you may find some day that out of the sins of his fathers
you have chosen your own to lay on him."

Rosewarne turned on her with a harsh glance of suspicion. No, her eyes
were candid--she had spoken so by chance--she did not guess.

Had he been blind all his life? It was certain that now at the last his
eyes saw the world differently, and all things in it. Those children
yonder--a hundred times from this window he had watched them at play
without heeding. To-night they moved against the dark yew-hedge like
figures in a toy theatre, withdrawn within a shadowy world of their own,
celebrating a ritual in which he had no concern. The same instant
revealed their beauty and removed them beyond his reach. Did he wish to
make amends? He could not tell. He only knew it was too late. The world
was slipping away from him--these children with it--dissolving into the
shadow that climbed about him.

Next morning he saddled his horse and rode. His way led him past the new
school-buildings; and he reined up for a minute, while his eyes dwelt on
them with a certain pride. As chairman of the new School Board he ha