After a while he closed his left eye and looked cautiously round the room. The tops of objects appeared indistinctly out of a grey mist. It was like looking at a partly fogged negative. He closed his right eye and repeated the process with the other. His field of vision was clear then, except for a speck of grey fog that hung threateningly in the upper left-hand corner. By dinner-time he could see nothing with the right eye, and the fog had closed on half the left eye’s vision. At tea-time he called the Sister on duty— "My eyes—hurt ... frightfully." Thus the Periwinkle, striving to hedge with Destiny. "Do they?" sympathised the Sister. "I’ll tell the Surgeon when he comes round to-night, and he’ll give you something for them. I shouldn’t read for the present if I were you." The Periwinkle smiled grimly, as if she had made a joke, and lay back, every nerve in his body strung to breaking-point. "Can’t see, eh?" The visiting Surgeon who leaned over his bed a few hours later looked at him from under puzzled brows. "Can’t see—d’you mean...." He picked up an illustrated paper, holding it about a yard away, and pointed to a word in block type: "What’s this word?" The Periwinkle stared past him with a face like a flint. "I can’t see the paper. I can’t see you ... or the room, or—or—anything.... I’m blind." His voice trembled. To the terror by night that followed was added physical pain past anything he had experienced or imagined in his short life. It almost amazed him that anything could hurt so much and not rob him of consciousness. The next room held a sufferer who raved in delirium: cursing, praying, and shrieking alternately. The tortured voice rose in the stillness of the night to a howl, and the Periwinkle set his teeth grimly. He was not alone in torment, but his was still the power to meet it like a man. By the end of a week the pain had left him. At intervals during this period he was guided to a dark room—for the matter of that, all rooms were dark to him—and unseen beings bandied strange technicalities about his ears. "Optic neuritis ... retrobulbar ... atrophy." The words meant nothing to the boy, and their meaning mattered less. For nothing, they told him, could give him back his sight. After that they left him alone, to wait with what patience he might until the next P. & O. steamer passed through. His first visitor was the Chaplain, the most well-meaning of men, whose voice quavered with pity as he spoke at some length of resignation and the beauty of cheerfulness in affliction. On his departure, the Periwinkle caught the rustle of the Sister’s dress. "Sister," said the boy, "will you please go away for a few minutes. I’m afraid I have to swear—out loud." "But you mustn’t," she expostulated, slightly taken aback. "It’s—it’s very wicked." "Can’t help that," replied the Periwinkle austerely. "Please go at once; I’m going to begin."