Lady Madeline started, and with difficulty suppressed a groan.  Roderick felt the start:  “Oh Mamma, Mamma,” cried he more cheerfully, “you must not do that!  I wasn’t thinking about earthly light in the least, but of a light which I know, when you come to hear of it, you will say is a great deal better.”

“Indeed! dear Roderick,” said Lady Madeline, trying to seem interested.

“Yes indeed.  Mamma.  Why, do you remember, (I had never thought about it till it came into my head to-day;) but do you remember the silly time when I wouldn’t fetch you any thing from the drawing room, unless there were candles in the room?”

“I recollect something about it,” said his Mother.

“Oh, I’m so glad you do; because now you can laugh with me over the nonsense I used to talk and feel then:  I remember I used to tell you I saw Bears when I shut my eyes, and wouldn’t go by the pipes in the passage, and more such foolish stuff!  How odd it seems that I should never have thought about this before, but I never did, and it never came into my head distinctly till to-day.”  And here Roderick fell into a kind of dream for a few minutes, but he soon began again.  “You know what I have done to-day, Mamma.  They told you quite right; but they forgot to tell you I have been practising walking across the leads for two or three days, that I might be able to go the great round to-day on purpose to tell you of it; because I thought you would be so much pleased to know I could go alone all over the house on the day year when I was first blind.  So now, Mamma, if ever, when I am grown up to be a man, an enemy comes and attacks the old Sea Castle, I shall be able to run about and give the alarm, for you know I could hear them, if I could do nothing else.”

There was another pause, for Madeline could not speak:  the often restrained tears for her son’s misfortune had this day burst forth, and could not be kept back; but Roderick did not know, and went on.

“Certainly those old foolish fears were very wrong, Mamma.  And I can’t think how it was, for you used to remind me always that God could take care of us by night as well as by day, in darkness as well as in light; and still somehow, though I knew it was true, I didn’t believe it,—­at least, not so as not to be afraid in the dark:  how very wrong it was!  Still I had quite forgotten all about it till this evening.  But, as I was going the last of the three rounds, I sat down on the leads for a few minutes to enjoy the air.  The sun was just setting, I am sure, for it felt so fresh and cool; and it was, as I sat there, that it came into my head how strange it was that, since the day I was first blind, I had never thought any more about being afraid in the dark! or by night any more than by day!  Indeed it has been quite a play to me ever since to do different things, and find my way about in all the rooms and all over the house, without seeing; and I have only known night from day by getting up and going to bed.  So that you see, Mamma, being always in the dark, has quite cured me of being afraid of it:  and is not this a very good thing indeed?”