“What do you mean?” she asked with feverish eagerness, holding the girl by the wrist. “Roy not dead?” Her voice broke.
“No, God performed a miracle for me.” The girl spoke simply, fully believing what she said. “Mr. Thursby was dead for many hours,” she explained, “then he came to himself. But he is—” Kasba hesitated, fearing to speak the terrible truth.
Lena noticed the girl’s hesitation and was alarmed at once. “Go on,” she cried, clutching the girl’s wrist hard. “Tell me, tell me quickly! Something has happened?” Her voice expressed the utmost anxiety.
“He is totally blind,” said Kasba sadly. She spoke in the greatest distress.
Lena’s face grew dead-white, she stood stiff and rigid, staring at the girl, quite dazed at the horror of the thing.
“Blind!” cried the Chief Factor who had come up. “How terribly horrible! Poor Roy! Ah!” He was just in time to catch his daughter, who uttered a short unnatural sound and reeled against him. But she did not lose consciousness and in a moment her strength returned.
“Let me go!” she cried, sobbing wildly and struggling in her father’s arms. “Let me go to him, or I shall die!”
“You shall go, my child,” said the Chief Factor soothingly. He glanced at Kasba, who nodded and stretched out her hand, that tiny brown hand, which small though it was, had pulled Roy out of the water.
“Come,” she said simply, “I will take you to him.”
Arriving at the hut Kasba stood aside to let Lena pass. “You will find him in there,” she said. But Lena did not hear her, for she was already through the door.