I gazed helplessly at the silent figure, with the blood still flowing in her veins, and yet living, as it were, in the darkness and loneliness of the tomb. "If she is blind and deaf and dumb, how does she manage to complain?" "Oh! she manages that all right, ma'am," said a granny whose one eye twinkled humorously in its socket; "she's not dumb--not 'alf. The nuss that's left and Mrs. Green, the other blind lidy, talk on her fingers to her, and she grumbles away, when the fit takes 'er, a treat to 'ear; not as I blimes her, poor sowl; most of us who comes 'ere 'ave something to put up with; but she 'as more than 'er share of trouble. No, none of us know 'ow to do it--we aren't scholards; but you catches 'old on 'er 'and, and mauls it about in what they call the deaf-and-dumb halphabet, and she spells out loud like the children." I remembered with joy that I also was "a scholard," for one of the few things we all learned properly at school was the art of talking to each other on our fingers under the desks during class. A good deal of water had flowed under London Bridge since then, but for once I felt the advantage of what educationists call "a thorough grounding." "How are you?" spelt out a feeble, harsh voice as I made the signs--I had forgotten the "w" and was not sure of the "r," but she guessed them with ready wit--then in weird rasping tones, piping and whistling into shrill falsetto like the "cracking" voice of a youth, she burst into talk: "Oh! I am so thankful--so thankful. It seems years since any one came to talk to me--the dear nurse has left, and the other blind lady's gone to have her inside taken out, and the blind gentleman is taking a holiday, and I have been that low I have not known how to live. '_Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit; in a place of darkness and in the deep. Thine indignation lieth hard upon me; and Thou hast vexed me with all Thy storms._' David knew how I feel just exactly--might have been a deaf and blind woman himself, shut up in a work'us. I have been here nigh on two year now; I used to do fine sewing and lace-mending for the shops, and earned a tidy bit, being always very handy with my needle; then one day, as I was stitching by the window--finishing a job as had to go home that night--a flash of lightning seemed to come and hit me in the eye somehow--I remember how the fire shone bright zig-zag across the black sky, and then there was a crash, and nothing more.