isters who first told Yacob that
Medina-sarote and Nunez were in love.

There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nunez
and Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as because they
held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the
permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing
discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of
liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing
could not be. The young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the
race, and one went so far as to revile and strike Nunez. He struck back.
Then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight,
and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against
him. But they still found his marriage impossible.

Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved
to have her weep upon his shoulder.

"You see, my dear, he's an idiot. He has delusions; he can't do anything
right."

"I know," wept Medina-sarote. "But he's better than he was. He's getting
better. And he's strong, dear father, and kind--stronger and kinder than
any I other man in the world. And he loves me--and, father, I love him."

Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, besides--
what made it more distressing--he liked Nunez for many things. So he went
and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other elders and
watched the trend of the talk, and said, at the proper time, "He's better
than he was. Very likely, some day, we shall find him as sane as
ourselves."

Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. He was
the great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very
philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing Nunez of his
peculiarities appealed to him. One day when Yacob was present he returned
to the topic of Nunez.

"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. I think
very probably he might be cured."

"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.

"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.

The elders murmured assent.

"Now, _what_ affects it?"

"Ah!" said old Yacob.

"_This_," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way