“As for the toothless villain, he screamed with merry laughter when they caught him.
“‘Hee, hee, my Bright Eyes!’ he cried. ‘You have been spying on me all this while, eh? Your eyes are too bright. You have been watching my revenge upon my enemy, the King! Too bright, too bright! From now you shall be blind—fast blind—you and your wives and your sons and daughters and your neighbors. From the Vale of Bright Eyes you shall now become the Vale of the Blind. And yours shall henceforth be a valley of ruin and decay. Blind, blind—and never again shall you see the gold of the day or the silver of the moon until I come to give you back your eyes—your bright eyes—hee, hee, hee!’
“And thus he fled from us. For the dark of the blind had come over the valley many years ago ... and there is nothing left for us but tears.”
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“AND so our valley has gone to rack and ruin,” concluded the blind man.
Peterkin was silent for some minutes after he had finished. Then he shook his head wisely, sadly.
“Can you wait four days until I rescue you?” he asked.
“Four days?” The man, his wife and little son all burst into a bitter laughter. “We have waited for half a century already. We can wait a century, if only in the end we gain our eyes again, and win revenge upon our toothless enemy. Four days, ho, ho!”
“You shall have both your eyes and your revenge,” promised the stranger. “It was only three days ago that I sped through the air in the cup of a sea-shell, in company with this toothless farmer. Oh, if I had only known, then!”
“What? In his company? Are you a friend of his?” The blind family rushed in about him, as if to capture him and flay him.
“No, no,” smiled Peterkin. “Not a friend at all. He tried to throw me hundreds of feet down to the ground. But he disappeared—and I do not know where he is. But I shall search the whole world over till I find him. And then—woe to him!”
So saying, he put his hand on the blind man’s shoulder and bade them all good-by. They gave him a few wild herbs to put into his blouse for luncheon—it was all they had for food. And then he went on his way, singing all sorts of promises to them as he went on down the hill.