Part 37 (2/2)

Behind him the court-room rang with excitement. He was aware of startled exclamations. He was aware of Cartwright, tragic-eyed, beside him, half-sheltering him, calling to him.

'Robbins! What's wrong? He's not speaking under oath. He's been brooding--'

'It's _so!_' said the boy.

For a moment he held himself erect among them, high-headed, joyous, splendid with the exaltation of the martyr. Then, suddenly, his eyes met the eyes of the prisoner. He dropped back into his seat, his shaking hands before his face.

It had lasted a second, less than a second, that frank, involuntary revelation; but in that second, his guard beaten down by sheer amazement, the prisoner's guilt stood plain in his face. In that second, reading the craven record of it, Robbins saw the glory of martyrdom s.n.a.t.c.hed from him forever--knew himself, now and now only, irrevocably perjured.

WHAT MR. GREY SAID

BY MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE

HE was the smallest blind child at Lomax, the State school for deaf and blind children. Even Jimmie Little, who looked like a small gray mouse, and who had always been regarded by the teachers as not much bigger than a minute, appeared large beside Stanislaus. He was so small, in fact, that Mr. Lincoln, the Superintendent, had declined at first to admit him.

'We don't take children under six,' he had said to Stanislaus's father when the latter had brought him to Lomax, 'and your little boy doesn't look five yet.'

'He'll be five the twenty-second of March,' the father said.

'I'll be five ve twenty-second of March,' Stanislaus echoed.

He was sitting holding his cap politely between his knees, swinging his fat legs with a gay serenity, while his blind eyes stared away into the dark. He had not been paying much attention to the conversation, being occupied with the working out of a little silent bit of rhythm by an elaborate system of leg-swings: twice out with the right foot; twice with the left; then twice together. He had found that swinging his legs helped to pa.s.s the time when grown-ups were talking. The mention of his birthday, however, brought him at once to the surface. That was because Mr. Grey had told him of a wonderful thing which would happen the day he was five. Thereafter his legs swung to the accompaniment of a happy unheard chant:--

'I'll be five years old' (right leg out), 'I'll be five years old' (left leg out), 'I'll be five years old on my _birf_-day!'

(Both legs in ecstatic conjunction.)

Stanislaus's father, a sad-eyed man, who, though he spoke with no accent, was evidently of emigrant extraction, looked troubled.

'My wife's dead,' he said, 'an' I'm workin' in the coalmines, an' you know that ain't no place for a little blind child. Every one told me sure you'd take him here.'

Mr. Lincoln hesitated. 'Well,' he said at length, 'I'll send for Miss Lyman,--she's the matron for the blind boys,--and if she consents to take him, I'll make no objection.'

Miss Lyman appeared presently, and Mr. Lincoln explained the situation.

'But he is such a little chap,' he concluded, 'it seems hardly possible for us to take him.'

Here, however, Stanislaus gave over his leg-swinging and took it upon himself to remonstrate.

'I _ain't_ little,' he said firmly. Slipping off his chair, he drew himself up very straight, and began patting himself all over. 'Feel me,'

he urged, 'dest feel me, I'm weally big. Feel my arms,' he held these chubby members out to Miss Lyman. 'An' my _legs_,--' he patted them,--'why ve're _aw_-ful big!' His serious little mouth rounded itself to amazement at the bigness of his legs.

It was beyond human nature, or at least beyond Miss Lyman's nature, to resist the appeal of his eager voice and patting baby hands. Obediently she ran an inquiring touch over his soft body, which was still plump babyhood, not having as yet thinned to boyhood.

'Why,' she said, turning gravely to Mr. Lincoln, 'he does _look_ rather small, but when you _feel_ him, you find he is really quite big.'

<script>