Dodson yielded his hands to those of the blind poet. “How they tremble, how they tremble!” said the poet. “They have a rarer eloquence than your lips, my friend. Let them embrace me; let them embrace me.” As the unhappy Dodson clasped the frail broken form in his strong arms, he seemed to learn quite suddenly why those once so lustrous eyes had the hard glare of stone. “Oh, Luney, Luney!” he cried in a kind of wail as the truth revealed itself, “do not tell me that you have been blind all these days and that I have not known it!” “A man’s blindness is no affliction,” said the dying poet, “if only he be secure in his friends. The sight of his eyes is as nothing in comparison with that which is given to his right hand. My great labours are near to their fruition, and I have a friend. And I am very happy, O my friend, and it is in this: the gentle and beneficent Earth, my mother, who has smitten her son with her caresses, bids me commit to your care the little treatise I have wrought on human life, on the life of man, on the life of the proudest of her children. Faithful friend and servant, I ask you to be the good angel of the public need. These eyes of mine are now void, as were those of my peers long ago; and the aged man, my father, is infirm and white-haired and unlearned in the ways of men--therefore, I confide to your care this which I have wrought. I ask you to take it away and print it immediately, and spread it broadcast among all the streets of the great city; and when all the street-persons have looked on what a lost soul in Hades has fashioned out of blood and tears, in order that they may find new sustenance, this weak and frail implement which has revealed the will of the Most High, shall return again to Earth, his mother, and weary with his great labours, she shall take him gently upon her breasts.” The blind poet uttered these strange words with a noble simplicity which yet filled his friend with dismay. As the great bulk of writing was committed by the poet into the care of the unhappy Dodson, the young man, powerful and materialistic as he was, seemed almost to faint under their intolerable burden. “Take it, friend,” said the dying poet. “Keep it jealously; it is a thing without price. And remember that I now count my days. And further remember my task is not accomplished until your own is fulfilled. Take this treatise straightway to that great house of publishers, which is the first of this country, wherein I, a slave, spent seven years of my existence upon the earth; and see that it is printed and bound with all the haste possible, and further that it is spread broadcast among all the persons in the streets of the great city, because until that is done, I cannot lie at peace.” The unhappy Dodson stood as one all broken with pain.