about me. I offered him the chair that always stands beside the hospital
bed. He must have heard me moving some objects I had placed on it, in
order to have them within reach of my hands.

"Never mind the chair," he said. "Just sit up a bit; there is room
enough on the bed for both of us. Have you got a cigarette to give a
fellow?"

I apologized, saying that I had only ---- ----, and that I didn't think
he would care to smoke them.

"Do you smoke them?" he questioned. "If they're good enough for you to
smoke, they're good enough for me."

That set me right at my ease. I was in the presence of a knight; but he
was first and last a _man_. Straight to the point he went. He never puts
a man through that bugbear of the soldier, a host of seemingly
inconsequential questions; he has the particulars of each man who is
likely to come under his direction long before he visits him.

"Have you," he said, "made up your mind to join our happy band at St.
Dunstan's. There's lots of room up there for you, and we want you."

Just here I would remark that No. 2 General was a sort of preparatory
school for St. Dunstan's. The adjutant from one of the St. Dunstan's
establishments, either the House, College, or Bungalow, came to read the
newspapers and talk with the men who were to study under him. So we had
by this means picked up much information about Sir Arthur, and knew the
man even before meeting him; but the being conjured up by our
imagination fell far short of the real man. He did not come to your
bedside commiserating with you over your misfortune. He was totally
unlike the average visitor, whose one aim seemed to be to impress on you
some appropriate--often most inappropriate, considering your
condition--text of scripture. Well, he was with me, and we talked and
smoked, the knight and the private soldier, both blind, but both
completely ignoring the fact. During our talk darkness seemed to
vanish, and I saw a great light--the battle could be won, and I would
win it. After that conference, I knew full well that I should not be a
burden upon anybody, sightless though I was.

Up to this time my idea of a blind man was just what is or was that of
the average sighted person--a man groping his way about the streets or
standing at some conspicuous corner with a card hanging on his breast
telling the world that he could not see; a cup to hold the coppers that
the sympathetic public would drop into it; and last, but not least, a