rds!_ I have never forgotten them, nor the tear that
glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a deeply
religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty almost as if he
were a child of her own.

Such women have strange intuitions.

Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance before
sceptical people--parents of boys, visitors, etc.--who had been told
of it, and who believed he could not have been properly blindfolded;
but he could never be induced to do so.

There was no mistake about the blindfolding--I helped in it myself;
and he afterwards told me the whole thing was "aussi simple que
bonjour" if once he felt the north--for then, with his back to the
refectory door, he knew exactly the position and distance of every
tree from where he was.

"It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do without
a dog"--he added; "I should be just as helpless as any other blind
man, unless I was in a place I knew as well as my own pocket--like
this play-ground! Besides, _I_ sha'n't go blind; nothing will ever
happen to _my_ eyes--they're the strongest and best in the whole
school!"

He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and looked
proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.

"But what _do_ you feel when you feel the north, Barty--a kind of
tingling?" I asked.

"Oh--I feel where it is--as if I'd got a mariner's compass trembling
inside my stomach--and as if I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything
in the world--as if I could go and have my head chopped off and not
care a fig."

"Ah, well--I can't make it out--I give it up," I exclaimed.

"So do I," exclaims Barty.

"But tell me, Barty," I whispered, "_have_ you--have you _really_
got a--a--_special friend above?_"

"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty,
and winked at me one eye after the other--and went
about his business. And I about mine.

Thus it is hardly to be wondered at that the spirit of this
extraordinary boy seemed to pervade the Pension F. Brossard, almost
from the day he came to the day he left it--a slender stripling over
six feet high, beautiful as Apollo but, alas! without his degree,
and not an incipient hair on his lip or chin!

Of course the boy had his faults. He had a tremendous appetite, and
was rather greedy--so was I, for that matter--and we were good
customers to la mere Jaurion; especially he, for he always had lots
of pocket-money, and was fond of