A moment later they were ashore with Jamie clinging to them, and Margaret hugging them and laughing and crying at the same time, and Thomas and Doctor Joe looking as pleased as ever two men could look.
Then the pent-up sorrow and disappointment in their hearts burst bounds, and these two lads who had fearlessly faced a wolf pack, and braved the wild blizzards and bitter cold of an arctic winter in the wilderness, broke down and wept.
In the cozy shelter of the cabin, in the long twilight, David and Andy told their story. And everybody praised their courage, and nobody blamed them, for they were guilty of no blame.
“You kept plenty o’ grit,” soothed Jamie, “and you couldn’t help Indian Jake’s takin’ th’ fur, and—and maybe it won’t be so bad goin’ blind—when I gets used to un.”
Oh, but Jamie, too, had grit, and grit a-plenty.
They tried now, one and all—save Doctor Joe, perhaps—to become reconciled to Jamie’s coming blindness. The great doctor and the marvelous cure were no longer mentioned. Thomas and the boys got the fishing nets out, and methodically went about their duties.
Doctor Joe did not return at once to Break Cove. He seemed to have lost heart and ambition. He ceased to sing his cheerful songs, and he would go out alone and for hours wander away into the forest, or pace up and down the gravelly beach of The Jug, and sometimes, with a frightened look in his face, he would sit and stare at Jamie.
On one of these occasions, on an afternoon a fortnight after the return of David and Andy, Doctor Joe, after watching Jamie for a long while, sprang suddenly to his feet, and, standing a dozen feet from Jamie, held out three fingers of his right hand and asked Jimmie to count them.
“I can’t make un out,” said Jamie. “They’re in a heavy mist.”
“Now count them,” and Doctor Joe moved nearer.