showed the least fraction of
talent; yet even his best efforts could scarcely throw a glimmer
through the cloud.

"But to-day you have done what I believed no breathing person could do.
You have worked a miracle. You have made me to see as with mine own old
eyes. Heaven grant that this is not all a dream to be waked up from."

We spent that night at the Archduke's _hospitar_ at Miramar--near
Raymond Lully's birthplace--where free housing is given to any
passer-by for three days, with olives, salt, and oil, the typical trio,
provided. In the evening I told her across the _brazero_ a tale
that had never crossed my lips before, the tale of how I had lost my
eyes. I took her in my story to the south of Africa, and led her out
over green rolling veldt to a hawthorn-crowned kopje, where we lay out
of sight amongst the bushes. I explained to her that I was a diamond
merchant, and that I was waiting there for men who were to bring me
stones for sale. And then I told how, instead of those I expected,
others came out of the soft black tropical night, in turn mistaking me
also for some one else. They thought I was there for I.D.B.--I, an
honest trader--and not daring to kill, had loaded their guns with
rock-salt. I told her how the first charge had struck me full in the
face and destroyed my sight for ever; how I had got up and fled
shrieking away, and then lay hid for days in a clump of karoo-scrub
nursing my hideous pain, and wishing for the death which would not
come. And then I sketched to her the way that Sadi had found me, and
nursed me, and been with me in all those groping after years, paying
full tribute to his devotion.

When I had finished she said she wanted to ask me one question, if she
might do so without offence.

"Nothing you would say," I replied, "can annoy me."

"Then tell me, Mr. Pether, were you a registered diamond merchant out
there?"

"I was. I swear I was. Had I been there for Illicit Diamond Buying I
should have deserved all I got, and more besides. But after being
blinded, where was the use of trying to retaliate? of proving it was
all a mistake? of pressing for a money recompense? Imprisoning a man,
or fining him, or even blinding him in turn, could not restore my
eyes."[3]

[3] _Note, by another hand._--Inquiries pushed by me,
Taltavull, through the agents of my brotherhood in the
neighbourhood of Du Toit's Pan, have elicited the following
communication: "Pether, mor