One warm autumn night both families were sitting on the terrace in front
of the house, admiring the starry sky, with its blue distances and
glimmering lights. The blind boy with his friend sat as usual by his
mother’s side. All was still around the mansion, and for the moment they
sat silent; only the leaves stirred from time to time, like startled
things, with unintelligible murmurings, and then lapsed into silence.
Suddenly a meteor, leaping forth from the darkness, flashed across the
sky in one brilliant streak; and as it gradually disappeared, it left
behind a trail of phosphorescent light. Petrùsya seated beside his mother
had linked his arm in hers, and she became suddenly conscious that he
started and began to tremble.
“What—was that?” he asked, with a look of trouble on his face.
“It was a falling star, my child.”
“Ah yes, a star,” he said thoughtfully. “I felt sure that it was a star.”
“How could you know, my boy?” inquired the mother, with a pitiful accent
of doubt in her voice.
“He is telling the truth,” exclaimed Evelyn; “he knows many things like
that.”
This increasing sensitiveness indicated that the boy was evidently
drawing near the critical period that lay between childhood and youth.
Meanwhile his development pursued its quiet course. He seemed to have
grown accustomed to his lot, and the exceptional and uniform character
of his sadness,—a sadness cheered as it were by no single ray of light,
but at the same time free from all eager cravings, and grown to be the
habitual background of his life,—was in some measure mitigated.
But this proved to have been simply a period of temporary repose.
Nature has appointed these resting-places that the young organism may
gain strength to meet other attacks. During these calms, new questions
imperceptibly rise to the surface and mature; and it needs but a touch to
disturb this outward peace, and stir the soul to its very depths, even as
the sea is lashed by a sudden squall.
[Illustration: V. LOVE.]