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WITH THE EYES OF THE BLIND
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with outstretched hand, knowing, instinctively, that some one sat there. Was it her father, she wondered, fallen asleep? Very gently she put out her hand, running her fingers lightly over the face of the man in the chair. It was a strange face !
"Father!" she screamed, springing back in fright; "father, where are you ? — come quick ! ' '
Her foot touched something upon the floor — some soft, huddled object that did not stir at all as she bent over it. Instantly the room rang with her terrified screams ; there were a few quick footsteps in the room ; the outer door closed softly, and a young man sped aAvay into the darkness. The servants, rushing into the library in a panic, found only a stricken, whitefaced girl piteously moaning : "Father! father ! ' ' while her hands clutched a limp, inert form, whose lips would never answer her again.
The death of John MacLane remained a mystery. The servants knew that he had left
the house that evening, after Nora had gone upstairs, but no one had heard him return, and no one could account for the mysterious stranger, whose face Nora had felt in the darkness. It was learnt that MacLane had, late in the afternoon of the day that he met his death, refused to see a broker named James Horton, whose business was on the verge of ruin thru MacLane 's operations. It was known that Horton 's feeling against MacLane was very bitter, but Horton easily established an alibi. He had spent the
SHE LOOKED OUT UPON A NEW, BEAUTIFUL WORLD
entire evening in his home, playing bridge with a party of neighbors. At the end of six months it was generally conceded that the case would go down in the records as an unsolved mystery. Nora — pretty, joyous, loving little Nora — had wilted under the blow like some tender flower touched by a sudden, savage blast. Nothing could rouse her from the pitiful apathy of her grief. Alone, in her enforced darkness, she mourned, growing so white and frail that it seemed as if her spirit was already slipping away to meet her beloved father's. She even refused, at first, to listen to Doctor Stuyvesant when he 'came to complete the plans for the operation that was to restore her sight.
"Why should I want to see?" she asked hopelessly. "I wanted to see my father — it will be only a new grief now, if I look out at the world and realize that he is not here."
' ' Your father would be grieved if you refused this chance of sight, Nora," the good doctor told her gravely. "It was his dearest wish. Do you think he would be pleased to know that you chose to spend your life in darkness? Have courage, my dear; try to live bravely, as your father would wish you to do."
So the day came, at last, when the bandages were removed from Nora's eyes, and she looked out upon a new, beautiful world. For a moment her face glowed with joy; then a quick rush of tears came, and she buried her face in her hands.
"Father would be so glad," she