She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this ward--the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed, nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to have several times given her an opening which she might have availed herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of a character which would not bear the light.