"Oculists are liable to draw wrong conclusions, just as other persons may do," he remarked. "In a matter of this magnitude you should--permit me to say so--endeavour to regain your sight and embrace any treatment likely to be successful. Blindness is one of man's most terrible afflictions, and assuredly no living person who is blind would wish to remain so." "I have every desire to regain my sight, but I repeat that I have no faith whatever in new treatment." "Your view is not at all unnatural, bearing in mind the fact that you have been pronounced incurable by the first men of the profession," he answered. "But may I not make an examination of your eyes? It is, of course, impossible to speak with any degree of authority without a diagnosis. You appear to think me a charlatan. Well, for the present I am content that you should regard me as such;" and he laughed as though amused. He seemed so perfectly confident in his own powers that I confess my hastily formed opinion became moderated and my prejudice weakened. He spoke as though he had detected the disease which had deprived me of vision, and knew how to successfully combat it. "Will you kindly come forward to the window?" he requested, without giving me time to reply to his previous observations. I obeyed his wish. Then I felt his fingers open my eyelids wide, and knew that he was gazing into my eyes through one of those glasses like other oculists had used. He took a long time over the right eye, which he examined first, then having apparently satisfied himself, he opened the left, felt it carefully, and touched the surface, of the eyeball, causing me a twinge of pain. "As I thought!" he ejaculated when he had finished. "As I thought! A slight operation only is necessary. The specialists whom you consulted were wrong in their conclusions. They have all three made an error which is very easy to make, yet it might have deprived you of sight for your whole life." "What!" I cried, in sudden enthusiasm. "Do you mean to tell me solemnly that you can perform a miracle?--that you can restore my sight to me?" "I tell you, sir," he answered quite calmly, "that if you will undergo a small operation, and afterwards subject yourself to a course of treatment, in a fortnight--or, say three weeks--you will again open your eyes and look upon the world." His words were certainly startling to me, shut out so long from all the pleasures of life. This stranger promised me a new existence, a world of light and movement, of colour, and of all the interests which combine to make life worth living. At first I was inclined to scorn this statement of his, yet so solemnly had he uttered it, and with such an air of confidence, that I became half convinced that he was more than a mere quack. "Your words arouse within me a new interest," I said. "When do you propose this operation?" "To-morrow, if you will." "Will it be painful?" "Not very--a slight twinge, that's all."