Joe Morrow was filled with a sense of pride and wonder. Bryan Smith said slowly:
“Doctor, I fail to see how you, sightless, could detect that.”
“Eyes,” Dr. Stone said. “Auxiliary eyes. When sight goes, other senses quicken.” He laid his hands upon the table, palms up, and the light shone upon the delicate, sensitive finger tips.
“You mean you could feel these grooves?” Captain Tucker demanded.
“Yes.”
The captain ran his own fingers across the signatures. “I don’t see how,” he complained. “I don’t feel a thing.”
Dr. Stone filled his pipe with expert care. “You are not blind,” he said mildly. “You lack a blind man’s touch.”
BIRTHDAY WARNING
Even though his eyes could not tell the difference between light and darkness, Dr. Stone knew that day had broken. The air had an early morning smell. Reaching out, he felt for the clock from which the glass face had been removed; his sensitive fingers, touching the exposed hands lightly, recorded the time. Five minutes of six. He sat up in bed.
He had gone to sleep thinking of Allan Robb, and now, awake, the thought returned. Tomorrow would be Allan’s birthday. Twenty-one years old; the master, in his own right, of a fortune. The doctor chuckled, and wondered just how much of a master Allan would really be—for a while, anyway. For Alec Landry was Allan’s guardian and had lived at the Robb homestead these six years since old Jamie Robb’s death. A straightforward man, Alec Landry, who had obeyed old Jamie’s dying command to “bring up my boy right.” A loud, hearty man, with a love of having his own way and a habit of roaring down any who opposed him. Tomorrow, then, Allan Robb would become master in name; but it would be several years, probably, before the young man got out from under Alec Landry’s hand.