“There is something I must tell her.  I cannot let her die until I do,” she said, and so the watchers went out and left the mother and child together.

What Lucy had to tell, no one knew; but when at the going down of the sun, the mother was dying, Lucy’s head was upon her neck, and so long as life remained, the pale hand smoothed the dark tresses of the sobbing girl, and the white lips whispered, softly: 

“God bless my little Lucy, He knows it all.  He can forgive all.  Try to be happy, and never forsake poor Robbie.”

“Never, mother, never,” was Lucy’s reply, and she kept the vow to the letter, becoming mother, sister, nurse, and teacher all in one, to the little blind Robin, who loved her in return with all the intensity of his nature.

It was the wish of Mr. Grey, that Lucy should be sent to school with the children of her age, but she objected strongly, as it would take her so much from Robin; so, a governess was employed in the house and whatever Lucy learned, she repeated to her brother, who drank in her lessons so eagerly, that he soon became her equal in everything except the power to read and write.  Particularly was he interested in the countries of Europe, which he hoped to visit some day, in company with his sister.

“Not that I can ever see them,” he said, “but I shall know just how they look, because you will describe them so vividly, and I can hear the dash of the sea at Naples, and feel the old pavements in Pompeii, and the hot lava of Vesuvius.  And, oh, perhaps we will go to the Holy Land, and stand just where Christ once stood, and you will see the hills He looked upon, and the spot on which He suffered.  And I shall be so glad and somehow feel nearer to Him.  And, oh, if He could be there as He was once—­a man, you know—­I’d cry to Him louder than ever old Bartimeus did, and tell Him I was a little blind boy from America, but that I loved Him, and wanted Him to make me see.  And He would, I know.”

Such were the dreams of the enthusiastic boy, but they were never to be realized.  Always delicate as a child, he grew more and more so as he became older, so that at last all mental labor was put aside, and when he was sixteen, and Lucy nineteen, they took him to St. Augustine, where he could hear the moan of the sea and fancy it was the Mediterranean in far-off Italy.  Lucy was of course with him, and made him see everything with her eyes, and took him to the old fort and led him upon the sea wall and through the narrow streets and out beneath the orange trees, where he liked best to sit and feel the soft, warm air upon his face and inhale the sweet perfume of the southern flowers.

But all this did not give him strength.  On the contrary, the hectic flush on his cheek deepened daily, his hands grew thinner and paler, and the eyelids seemed to droop more heavily over the sightless eyes.  Robin was going to die, and he knew it, and talked of it freely with his sister, and of Heaven, where Christ would make him whole.