We are anxious to see what kind of people get safely up and down this staircase, and as we ascend we knock accidentally up against something; it is a door and a landing. The door is opened, and as the light is thrown on to where we stand we give an involuntary exclamation of horror; the door opens right on to the corner stair. The woman who comes out would, if she stepped incautiously, fall six feet, and nothing could save her. It is a tidy room this, for the neighbourhood. A good hardworking woman has kept her home neat, even in such surroundings. The rent is four and sixpence a week, and the family living in it numbers eight souls; their total earnings are twelve shillings. A hard lot, one would fancy; but in comparison to what we have to encounter presently it certainly is not. Asked about the stairs, the woman says, 'It is a little ockard-like for the young 'uns a-goin' up and down to school now the Board make 'em wear boots; but they don't often hurt themselves.' Minus the boots, the children had got used to the ascent and descent, I suppose, and were as much at home on the crazy staircase as a chamois on a precipice. _Excelsior_ is our motto on this staircase. No maiden with blue eyes comes out to mention avalanches, but the woman herself suggests 'it's werry bad higher up.' We are as heedless of the warning as Longfellow's headstrong banner-bearer, for we go on. It is 'werry bad' higher up, so bad that we begin to light some more matches and look round to see how we are to get down. But as we continue to ascend the darkness grows less and less. We go a step at a time, slowly and circumspectly, up, up to the light, and at last our heads are suddenly above a floor and looking straight into a room. We have reached the attic, and in that attic we see a picture which will be engraven on our memory for many a month to come. The attic is almost bare; in a broken fireplace are some smouldering embers; a log of wood lies in front like a fender. There is a broken chair trying to steady itself against a wall black with the dirt of ages. In one corner, on a shelf, is a battered saucepan and a piece of dry bread. On the scrap of mantel still remaining embedded in the wall is a rag; on a bit of cord hung across the room are more rags--garments of some sort, possibly; a broken flower-pot props open a crazy window-frame, possibly to let the smoke out, or in--looking at the chimney-pots below, it is difficult to say which; and at one side of the room is a sack of Heaven knows what--it is a dirty, filthy sack, greasy and black and evil-looking. I could not guess what was in it if I tried, but what was on it was a little child--a neglected, ragged, grimed, and bare-legged little baby-girl of four. There she sat, in the bare, squalid room, perched on the sack, erect, motionless, expressionless, on duty.