Extract from a letter written by B. G. to Seymour.
Sat., 7 April.
“Dear Seymour,
“An awful thing has happened. John is blinded. Mrs. Haye, his stepmother, you know, wrote a letter from Barwood which reached me this morning. The doctors say he hasn’t a chance of seeing again. She has asked me to write to all his school friends and to you. It is a terrible story. Apparently he was going home after Noat had ‘gone down,’ on Thursday, that is. The train was somewhere between Stroud and Gloucester, and was just going to enter a cutting. A small boy was sitting on the fence by the line and threw a big stone at the train. John must have been looking through the window at the time, for the broken glass caught him full, cut great furrows in his face, and both his eyes are blind for good. Isn’t it dreadful? Mrs. Haye says that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy. Blindness, the most . . .” etc.
[PART II
CHRYSALIS]
PART II—CHRYSALIS