When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nunez crossed the

stream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and

approached them, he was sure that they were blind. He was sure

that this was the Country of the Blind of which the legends told.

Conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and rather

enviable adventure. The three stood side by side, not looking at

him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his

unfamiliar steps. They stood close together like men a little

afraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though

the very balls beneath had shrunk away. There was an expression

near awe on their faces.

"A man," one said, in hardly recognisable Spanish. "A man it

is--a man or a spirit--coming down from the rocks."

But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who

enters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the

Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his

thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:--

In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."

And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them and

The Door in the Wall And Other Stories