Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/80

 moment, during which his eyes roved over the well chosen classics. "I've heard of one or two of these before—casually. I've an idea that if the Patriarch's got all this inside his gray matter, it's just as well for the Flopper, for Pale Face Harry, for Helena and yours truly that he's deaf and dumb—and will be blind."

Madison came back to the Patriarch with beaming face, and picked up the slate.

"I read a great deal myself," he wrote. "It is a pleasure to find real books here. May I, during my stay in Needley, look upon them in a little way as my own library?"

"You are very welcome indeed," the Patriarch answered.

"Thank you, I will," wrote Madison. "And now, surely, I must go"—he smiled at the Patriarch.

"Come to-morrow," invited the Patriarch. "I would like to show you all around my little place here."

"Indeed, I will," Madison scratched upon the slate, "and do you know that somehow, since I came here to-night, I feel a sense of relief, a sort of guarantee that everything is going to be all right with me in the future."

The Patriarch smiled quietly, almost tolerantly.

"I know that," he wrote. "Keep your mind free of doubt, be optimistic and cheerful as regards yourself, nourish the faith that has already taken root and that I feel responds to mine; keep in the open air and take plenty of exercise."

Slowly, with an apparently abstracted air,