News traveled swiftly by word-of-mouth. And bad news was fleetest of all.
At first Jasper and his wife were unaware of their babe’s fate, though Talithie had noticed one day, when the midwife carried the little one to the door where the sun was shining brightly, that it did not bat an eye. Granny Withers noticed too, but she said never a word. The young mother kept her fear within her heart. She did not speak of it to Jasper.
Two weeks later, after Granny Withers had gone, Talithie was up doing her own work. Supper was over and the young parents sat by the log fire. There was chill in the air. The babe had whimpered in her bee-gum crib, a crib that the proud young father had fashioned from a hollowed log in which wild bees had once stored their honey. Cut the log in two, did Jasper, scraped it clean, and with the rounded side turned down it made as fine a cradle as anyone could wish. With eager hands Talithie placed in it, months before her babe was born, a clean feather tick, no bigger than a pillow of their own bed. Pieced a little quilt too, did the happy, expectant mother.
How contentedly the little one snuggled there even the very first time Talithie put her in the crib! Rarely did the child whimper, but this night small Margie was fretful. Talithie gathered her up and came back to the hearth crooning softly as she jolted to and fro in a straight chair. The Tipton household, like most in Crockett’s Hollow, owned no such luxury as a rocker. But for all the crooning and jolting small Margie fretted, rubbed her small fists into her eyes, and drew up her legs. “Might be colic,” thought Talithie. “Babes have to fret and cry some, makes them grow,” offered the young father who continued to whittle a butter bowl long promised. However, for all his notions about it, Talithie was troubled. Never before had she known the babe to be so fretful.
The log fire was burning low and in the dimness of the room she leaned down to the hearth, picked up a pine stick and lighted it. She held it close above the babe’s face. The small eyes were open wide and strangely staring. Talithie passed the bright light to and fro before the little one’s gaze. But never once did the babe bat a lash.
“Lord God Almighty!” Talithie cried, dropping the lighted pine to the floor. “Our babe is blind, Jasper! Blind, I tell you! Stone blind!”
Jasper leaped to his feet. The wooden bowl, the knife, clattered to the floor. The pine stick still burning lay where it had fallen.
“Our babe can’t be blind,” he moaned, falling to his knees. “Our helpless babe that’s done no harm to any living soul, our spotless pure babe can’t be so afflicted!” he sobbed bitterly, putting his arms about the two he loved best in all the world.
The pine stick where Talithie dropped it burned deep into the puncheon floor leaving a scar that never wore away.
Again old Granny Withers hobbled over the mountain as fast as she had the night she bore the news to Sabrina about the bat that flew over the fair bride’s head. “Talithie’s babe is blind—stone blind, Sabrina Ashby! Do you hear that?”