"You have some young St. Bernard dogs close by," said Eric.
"Yes; do you know them by their whimper?"
"I can't tell the particular breed in that way. I saw a St. Bernard dog out there in the court; but I know by the sound that these puppies are blind and not a week old."
The boy looked at Eric as if he were a magician; he opened a door, but begged him to go no nearer, because the mother was very savage, and was just then suckling all the five young ones. Eric did approach her, however, and she looked at him without growling, and again the boy gazed at the stranger in astonishment.
"You can certainly tell me why dogs are born blind," he began.
Eric smiled. A boy who asks questions is desirous of instruction and ready for it; it is only necessary to put things before him which will lead him to question.
"Not only dogs," replied Eric, "but cats, eagles, and hawks come into the world blind. It may be that those animals which need sharp eyes for their support and protection have a gradual development of the power of sight, so that they do not see the light, as the saying is, all at once. Man even, though he opens his eyes at his birth, has no real power of sight at first; he has to learn to see during his first year. Man, like the brute, learns to use his limbs in his earliest years, but one thing the brute wants, he can never acquire articulate speech."
A thrill passed over the boy as he listened to the stranger, whose words again had a tone of strangely magnetic power. In the excited state in which Eric had been for two days, and which reached its height at this moment, it seemed to him as if he were acting out a fairy tale, or one of those dreams in which one says to himself, in the wonder of the dream-life, "Wake up, you are certainly dreaming!" There was something which gave him a sense of being merely a spectator of his own life, though he knew that he was actually living it. He compelled himself to collect his thoughts, and said at last,—
"You are the son of Herr Sonnenkamp, are you not? and your name is Roland?"
"Roland Franklin Sonnenkamp; what is yours?"