Apollonius was talking more and more eagerly to the children. He had failed to hear the remark or he did not want to let the angry woman know whose face he carried so vividly within him. He would have recognized the little ones, if they had met him by chance, as his brother's children by their resemblance to their mother. But the question how they had become so quickly intimate with him ought to have been put to old Valentine. It was he who had been continually telling them about the uncle who was soon coming to see them--perhaps only so as to be able to talk with some one about what he liked to talk of so much. The brother and the sister-in-law avoided such conversations, and the father did not make himself familiar enough with the old fellow to talk with him about matters which might give him an excuse to drop into any kind of intimacy. Old Valentine would also have been able to say that the children had not met their uncle just by chance. They had come to find him. Old Valentine had thought of how love that has waited long hurries to meet thousands of homecomers; it had hurt him to think that his favorite alone should fail to find any greeting before he knocked at his father's door. Apollonius suddenly ceased speaking. He was shocked to think that his embarrassment had caused him to forget his father. His brother understood his start and said with relief: "He's in the little garden." Apollonius jumped up and hurried out. There, among his beds, crouched the figure of the old gentleman. He was still following old Valentine's shears with his critical hands as the servant slipped along on his knees before him. He found many an inequality which the fellow had to remove at once. It was no wonder. Twice every minute old Valentine thought: "Now he's coming!" And when he thought thus the shears cut crookedly right into the bog. And the old gentleman would have growled in quite another manner if the same thought had not made uncertain the hand that was now his eye. Apollonius stood before his father and could not speak for pain. He had long known that his father was blind and had often pictured him to himself in sorrowful thought. At such times he had seen him looking as usual, only with a shield over his eyes. He had thought of him sitting or leaning on old Valentine, but never as he now saw him, the tall figure helpless as a child, the trembling and uncertain hands feeling their way. Now he knew for the first time what it meant to be blind.