"
His big hands clenched until they fairly trembled with their own
tenseness. "It's tough to go blind, Steve!"
His hands relaxed; he sat still, staring into that black nothingness
which always engulfed him. When he spoke again it was drearily,
hopelessly, like a man communing with his own sorrow, oblivious of a
listener:
"Yes, it's fair hell to be blind. If there's anything worse I'd like
to know what it might be. To be walkin' along in the dark, always in
the dark--to stumble an' fall an' hear a man laugh--to pitch head firs'
over a box that had been slipped quiet in your way----"
"Blenham did that sort of thing?" demanded Packard sharply.
It would have done Bill Royce good to see the look in his eyes then.
Royce nodded.
"Blenham did whatever he could think of," he muttered colorlessly.
"An' he could think of a good many things. Just the same--maybe some
day----"
"And yet you stayed on, Bill?" when Royce's voice stopped.
"I'd promised your dad I'd be here--with the coin--when you come back.
He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word
unless I was right here all the time. An' ol' man Packard, after I was
blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just
obeyed orders. Which, I've done, no matter what they was.
"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner? But to get this
tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do
for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out
somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me.
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