All this time Jabez was struggling, and always into deeper water, with the ice that would not bear his weight when he let himself rest upon it. He could land easily on the other side, he knew, but then he must go home by the bridge, a good half-mile and more, which he did not care to do. He struggled awhile, cheered by the voices of his companions; but he had to give it up at last, as he owned afterwards he should have done at first; and he was chilled to the bone before he reached home. The next day young Van was at school--"as smart as ever," the boys declared--and so was Jabez, but Jabez was not as smart as ever. He shivered and burned alternately till noon, and then he went home; and that was the last that was seen of Jabez in the school that winter. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. GOOD SEED AND GOOD FRUIT. There was a hard time before Jabez. Rheumatic fever was among the least of the troubles suggested as possible in his case by his grandfather, when he came shivering home from the mill-pond that night. But that was happily averted by the prompt and skilful treatment of Dr Everett, after just enough of suffering to make Jabez ever for the future rather more sympathetic with the aches and pains of his grandfather. Jabez, however, was not to escape his share of discipline; and his trouble came, as most people's troubles seem to come, in the way which is hardest to bear. He did not have "the long spell of rheumatism" which his grandfather had predicted, but he had what was worse. Inflammation settled in the lad's eyes, and for a time he suffered great pain. He could have borne the pain patiently, even cheerfully. That which tried his courage and brought him low was the darkness--the darkness and the horrible doubt whether he was ever to see the light again. He need not have suffered from this fear. Dr Everett never really feared blindness for him, and always spoke cheerfully to him about soon being well again. "But that is the way the doctors have of letting a fellow down easy," thought Jabez, taking less comfort than he might have done from the doctor's words. No visitors were admitted except those whom the doctor allowed to come, and every day seemed like a week to Jabez, and the nights were longer still. In the daytime he could hear his grandmother moving about the rooms, and the voices of chance comers and goers to the house. At night there was no sound but the rush of the wind, or the barking of his dog Buff outside; and within the ceaseless tick-tack of the tall clock in the corner, which said to him all manner of solemn things which he could not forget.