The moments passed. The thrush sang once, stirred in the trees, flew to another, sang again, and was not heard. The blind eyes staring up at the sky saw nothing material, and yet began to see. A dim ray glowed in the blackness. After a time he said hurriedly to himself, nervously anxious lest he should let the clue out of his hand: "Our senses are not ourselves; we are not our senses. No; they are the instruments of our understanding. To be blind means that I have one less instrument than other men. But a man with a telescope has one more than other men, and is life worthless to them because of that?" He paused breathless with the effort of the first thought of his own since, since.... "And our senses, even the best of them are like an earthworm's vague intuitions beside scientific instruments, a thermometer, a microscope, a photographic plate. And yet with what they give us, poor, imperfect as it is, we make our life, we make our life." He took one more poor stumbling step along the path he divined open to him: "A man with understanding, without a telescope, without a microscope can see more than a fool with both instruments." Aloud he said gravely, as though it were a statement of great value: "The use one makes of what one has, that is the formula. That is my formula." There was a pause, for him luminous. He told himself quietly, without despair: "And as for understanding, for really seeing what is, aren't we all groping our way in the dark? Am I blinder than before?" It seemed to him that something within him righted itself, balanced, poised. His sickness left him. He knew an instant's certainty ... of what? Of himself? Of life? If so it was the first he had ever known in all his life. Strange that it should come new, when.... Then all this fell away from him. He thought no more. He lay on the earth now, not like a dead man on a battlefield, but like a child on its mother's knees. He felt the earth take him in her arms, and he closed his eyes, abandoning himself to her embrace. * * * * * The sound of distant voices roused him from his dreaming doze. He turned on his elbow to listen. The old aunt, the old cousin were talking together: "Oh, the naughty little girl, off there in the meadow chasing butterflies! How heartless children are! To leave her poor brother all alone, when he needs so to be cheered!" The blind man lying in the ferns broke out into a laugh, a ringing young laugh, without irony, without bitterness. It was the first time he had laughed since ... since his blindness. HATS