"Her eyes?— Her eyes!"
Doctor Barnes felt on his arm as savage a grip as he ever had known. Sim Gage's face changed as he turned away.
"Good God A'mighty! If she could see!" His own face seemed suddenly pale beneath its grime.
CHAPTER XXX
BEFORE DAWN
A day passed, two, and three. Nothing came to break the monotony at the big dam. Donkey engines screamed intermittently. Workmen still passed here or there with their barrows. Teams strained at heavy loads of gravel and cement. The general labor in the way of finishing touches on the undertaking still went on under the care of the foremen, monotonously regular. No one knew that Waldhorn, chief engineer, was a prisoner under guard.
Mary Gage was more ignorant than any prisoner of what went on about her. A hard lot, that of waiting at any time, but the waiting of the newly blind—there is no human misery to equal it. It seemed at times to her she must go mad.
She recognized the footfall of Doctor Barnes when one morning she heard it on the gallery floor inside the slamming screen door. "Come in," she said, meeting him. "What is it?"
He entered without any speech, cast himself into a chair. She knew he was looking at her steadfastly.