Page:Blind Allan (2).pdf/18

18 draught of water to a wretch in a crowded dun- geon. But he knew not whether it was to ripen into the perfect day, or gradually to fade back again into the depth of his former darkness.

But when his Fanny, she on whom he had so loved to look when she was a maiden in her teens, and who would not forsake him in the first misery of that great affliction, but had been overjoyed to link the sweet freedom of her prime to one sitting in perpetual dark, when she, now a staid and lovely matron, stood before him with a face pale in bliss, and all drenched in the flood like tears of an un- supportable happiness; then truly did lie feel what a heaven it was to see! And as he took her to his heart, he gently bent back her head, that he might devour with his eyes that benign beauty which had for so many years smiled upon him in- beheld, and which now that he had seen once more, he felt that he could even at that very mo- ment die in peace.

In came with soft steps, one after another, his five loving children, that for the first time they might be seen by their father. The girls advan- ced timidly, with blushing cheeks and bright shining hair, while the boys went boldly up to his side, and the eldest looking in the face, exclaimed with a shout of joy, “Our Father sees ! -our