“Shure, an’ I don’t know what to make of it at all, at all,” he said at last, in a quivering voice. “Shure an’ I thought the age of miracles was passed. I’m only an ignorant old man, with no eyes at all; but you lads have given me something that’s near as good. Shure an’ it’s an old sinner I am, for shure. Many’s the day I’ve sat here, prayin’ the Lord would give me wan more minute o’ sight before I died, an’ it was unanswered my prayers wuz, I thought. It’s grateful I am to yez, lads. It’s old Adam McNulty’s blessin’ ye’ll always have. An’ now will yez put them things in my ears? It’s heaven’s own angels I’d like to be hearin’ agin. That’s the lad—ah!”
And while the beatific expression stole once more over his blind old face the boys stole silently out.
CHAPTER X
THE ESCAPED CONVICT
The boys saw a good deal of Adam McNulty in the days that followed, and the change in the old man was nothing short of miraculous.
He no longer sat in the bare kitchen rocking and smoking his pipe, dependent upon some passer-by for his sole amusement. He had radio now, and under the instruction of the boys he had become quite expert in managing the apparatus. Although he had no eyes, his fingers were extraordinarily sensitive and they soon learned to handle the set intelligently.
His daughter Maggie, whose gratitude to the boys knew no bounds, looked up the radio program in the paper each day and carefully instructed her father as to just when the news reports were given out, the story reading, concerts, and so forth.
And so the old blind man lived in a new world—or rather, the old world which he had ceased to live in when he became blind—and he seemed actually to grow younger day by day. For radio had become his eyes.