The Topeka state journal., 1921-11-19
Euening Story
Blind Eyes.
BY DORA NOLAN.

It often happens with drink. A
man who has left intoxicants strictly
alone in youth develops a weakness for
them late in life. That man comes a
harder cropper than one who has
early set foot in the bibulous way. So
it was with Niles Grey, the old lover"
as they call him now in Pleasant VAL
ley. But it waSNno craving for strong
waters that waited till past his middle
years before assailing Niles. It was a
longing for romantic love.
The township of Pleasant Valley
embraces a lake. One shore OF it acts
as a boundary for the village of
PleaSantviile; the other is sWeetly
wooded in front of r grassy plateau,
and on the plateau sits an old brown
farm house. untenanted for five years
at the beginning of this story.
Niles Grey was an unnoticeable man
who for many years had kept a small
hardware shop in a stunted city and
lived in the little room at the rear. He
remembered very little about his
parents, but an aunt had dinned into
him the fact that they had died IN
destitution, having failed to save in
easy times. Niles purpose was that
this should not happen to him. So the
little shop and the back room saw
Niles hair turn from dusty brown to
dusty gray and his body grow per-
ceptiblX less, like a russet apple after
a cellared winter, the while his bank
account grew greater
Niles never employed more than one
clerk and that one always a girl. for
housewives were scornful of a mere
mans opinion on household utensils.
There had been a succession of such
clerks; usually they had left to be
married.
Niles ambition had been to retire
at fifty with enough saved to live on
comfortably for the rest of his life.
Like most with this l.
overstayed his limit and it took the
words of an outdoor preacher, which
reached his ears as he stood on the
uoorstsp one evening. to bring sharply
10 ms consciousness that Oldest OF
truthS-that man is born to die and
verify his years are three-score wears
and ten, and if-but Niles knew NO
reason why the 'if' should apply to
himself. -
So Niles sold out his business and
having always lived in a city, hankered
Tor the country. Thus in the course
astute real estate agent, Niles Grey
came to live in the old brown-farm-
mouse on the woods encircled platear
above Lake Pleasant
Niles had always kept house fol
hlmself and he continued to do so. He
mace Ilttle garden, putting to use fol
the rirst time, with his own hands. the
tools he had spent his life selling tc
others He took walks thru the woods
and to the village, and he sat out in
front of his house and looked down on
the lakeland thought
There was one conclusion at which
| Niles thought always arrived-hov
little he had to think about The
many, many days spent in his Nttl,
shop had been uneventful enough. Th'
! departure of one clerk and the hiring
| OF another alone divided them int
| periods. Many times he ran over tn,
list-and always he stopped when II,
| came to Miss Lamb. Why had sh,
left? 1t was not to be married, h'
| knew.
"Is it because of anything I have
| done?" Niles had asked her.
TITS because of something yoI
| haven't DONE" she had answered anC
there was a look in the pale blue eye
which said, I'm safe in1saying this fol
you will never understand"
| Because Niles had SO little to thinl
| about he learned to dream. And tn
! eligible single women of the village
looking across the lake and seeing hin
| sitting there in front of his house
pitied his lonely life for its emptiness
All but one. Miss Lefty. the villag'
seamstress, couldn't see that far. Sh'
couldn't see anything clearly, nova
days, unless it was quite close to he
| eyes.
Niles wasn't thinking Of the single
| women of the village, but about wha
his life would have been like if h
had married young. And because nov
it could never be, of-eourse, he begaI
to wish that it might have been. H,
! took to walking past the houses where
lived the two newly married younl
couples of the village. Till one eve
ming a daring idea came to him. Sup
| pose he were to build q little hous'
! right pAaF hiS-SfgPh a cottage & 8
newly welded paid might well long Il
live in; mights not one of the younL
| couples take to it, if he offered it al
most rent free, and let him be an on
locker at what he had missed? Tha
very evening he walked around to thC
! PleasantvilIe postoffice to mail a let
| ter to a man who could tell him ex-
actly what such a little house would
| cost.
| He arrived there lust as the mai