y Gage recorded them.

"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend.
And she did say them, over and over again.

"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly. "I can't stand it any
more! I can see! I can see!"

She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and
put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.

"Annie, I _know_ I can see! It was light--at the door there! I can
see. I can _see_!" She began to weep, trembling.

"Hush!" said Annie, frightened. "It ain't possible! It can't be true!
_What_ did you see?"

"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing. "Just the light. Don't tell
him. Put back the bandage. But, oh, Annie, Annie, I can _see_!"

"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the
tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.

"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a
fellow felt that way about me--couldn't remember nobody but me that
way--why, me for him! Mushy--but times comes when a girl falls strong
for the mushy, huh?

"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll
never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no
more of that strong-arm writing at all."

Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend
passing down the little hall. She was alone again. Her heart was
throbbing high.

What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his
recessional as well. Now she knew that he was indeed going away from
her life forever. Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision?

CHAPTER XXXII

THE ENEMY

The night wore on slowly. Midnight struck, and the cold of the
mountain night had reached its maximum chill. To the ears of the weary
patrols there came no sound save the continuous complaint of the
waters, a note rising and falling, increasing and decreasing in volume,
after the strange fashion of waters carried by the chance vagaries of
the air. At times the sound of the river rose to great volume, again
it died down to a low murmur, the voice of a beaten giant protesting
against his shackles. Came two o'clock in the morning, and the guards
walked their beats with the weariness of men who have fought off sleep
for hours. Sim Gage, sleepless so long, was very weary, but he kept
about his work.

At intervals of half an hour he crunched down the gravel-faced slope of
the bank whic