"If my eyes was as good as my ears, Cap'en Nat Kemp," the other retorted, "there's many as wouldn't find it so easy to talk o' breakin' my 'ed. Other people's business! Lord! I know enough to 'ang some of 'em, that's what I know! I could tell you some o' _your_ business if I liked,--some as you don't know yourself. Look 'ere! You bin to a funeral. Well, it ain't the last funeral as 'll be wanted in your family; see? The kid's mother's gone; don't you be too sure 'is father's safe! I bin along o' some one you know, an' _'e_ don't look like lastin' for ever, 'e don't; 'e ain't in 'ealthy company." Grandfather Nat twitched my sleeve, and we walked on. "Awright!" the blind man called after us, in his tone of affable ferocity. "Awright, go along! You'll see things, some day, near as well as I can, what's blind!" "That's a bad fellow, Stevy," Grandfather Nat said, as we heard the fiddle and the song begin again. "Don't you listen to neither his talk nor his songs. Somehow it don't seem nat'ral to see a blind man such a bad 'un. But a bad 'un he is, up an' down." I asked how he came to know about the funeral, and especially about my coming to Wapping--a thing I had only learned of myself an hour before. My grandfather said that he had probably learned of the funeral from somebody who had been at the Hole in the Wall during the day, and had asked the reason of the landlord's absence; and as to myself, he had heard my step, and guessed its meaning instantly. "He's a keen sharp rascal, Stevy, an' he makes out all of parties' business he can. He knew your father was away, an' he jumped the whole thing at once. That's his way. But I don't stand him; he don't corne into my house barrin' he comes a customer, which I can't help." Of the meaning of the blind man's talk I understood little. But he shocked me with a sense of insult, and more with one of surprise. For I had entertained a belief, born of Sunday-school stories, that blindness produced saintly piety--unless it were the piety that caused the blindness--and that in any case a virtuous meekness was an essential condition of the affliction. So I walked in doubt and cogitation.