at the sound of firing,
his blindness, as always when something was happening about him, was
obtruded upon him. He felt helpless because he was blind, not because
he had been injured. He had forgotten entirely that for almost two
weeks he had not stirred from bed; he had risen and stood and walked,
without staggering, to the door and to the top of the stairs before,
now, he remembered. So what he already had done showed him that he had
merely again to put his injury from his mind and he could go on. He
went down the stairs almost steadily.

There was still no sound or any evidence of any one below. The gases
of the firing were clearing away; the blind man could feel the slight
breeze which came in through the windows of his bedroom and went with
him down the stairs; and now, as he reached the lower steps, there was
no other sound in the room but the tread of the blind man's bare feet
on the stairs. This sound was slight, but enough to attract attention
in the silence there. Santoine halted on the next to the last
step--the blind count stairs, and he had gone down twenty-one--and
realized fully his futility; but now he would not retreat or merely
call for help.

"Who is here?" he asked distinctly. "Is any one here? Who is here?"

No one answered. And now Santoine knew by the sense which let him feel
whether it was night or day, that the room was really dark--dark for
others as well as for himself; the lights were not burning. So an
exaltation, a sense of physical capability, came to Santoine; in the
dark he was as fit, as capable as any other man--not more capable, for,
though he was familiar with the room, the furniture had been moved in
the struggle; he had heard the overturning of the chairs.

Santoine stepped down on the floor, and in his uncertainty as to the
position of the furniture, felt along the wall. There were bookcases
there, but he felt and passed along them swiftly, until he came to the
case which concealed the safe at the left side of the doors. The books
were gone from that case; his bare toes struck against them where they
had been thrown down on the floor. The blind man, his pulse beating
tumultuously, put his hand through the case and felt the panel behind.
That was slid back exposing the safe; and the door of the safe stood
open. Santoine's hands felt within the safe swiftly. The safe was
empty.

He recoiled from it, choking back an ejaculation. The entry to this
room had been