A Vendetta of the Desert Author:William Charles Scully General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1898 Original Publisher: Methuen Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typo... more »s or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III BLIND ELSIE STEPHANUS had two children, both daughters. Sons had been born to him but they died in infancy. His elder daughter, Sara, was seventeen years of age at the time of the encounter at the spring; Elsie, the younger, was eight. She had been blind from her birth. Sara was comely to look upon. Tall and dark, with strongly marked features, she resembled her father in appearance to a remarkable degree. Little Elsie took after her mother ; she was of fair complexion, with long locks of dead-gold hair which took a wonderful depth of colour in certain half- lights. Her eyes were very strange and in no way suggested blindness. They were of a deep steel- blue colour, but in the lights which made her hair wonderful an amber tone would shimmer up through the blue and give forth startling gleams and flashes. This peculiarity was especially noticeable when the child was under the influence of strong excitement. Elsie was a silent child and possessed a calm and happy nature. Her faculty for finding her way about in the utter darkness in which Fate had hopelessly placed her was almost miraculous. Strangers, seeing her eyes and noticing the sure and fearless way in which she went abroad, would often doubt the fact of her blindness, but, as a matter of fact, she was incapable of perceiving even the faintest glimmer of light. The soul of this blind child with the sweet inscrutable face, expressed itself in a passionate love for her fathe...« less