“He was selling things in the street when the clergyman found him,” says Mr. Wells behind his pipe.  “Had a little tray strapped on to his shoulders, and two sticks to keep him standing.  Collar-studs, tie-clips, bootlaces, matches—­you know.  You’ve often seen trays like that, I dare say.  Well, that was what Joe was doing when the clergyman found him.  Not this clergyman, you understand.  The one before, Father Vivian.  He’s now a bishop.  Out somewhere in Africa.  That’s his photograph on the wall over there.  He sent us a picture-postcard the other day.  Little black woolly-headed baby with no clothes on!  I haven’t seen it myself, because my eyes are bad; but they all laugh at it, and I dare say it’s funny enough.  A nice man Father Vivian was.  A genneman.  He’s a bishop now, but he don’t forget his old friends, do he?”

* * * * *

And as we listen to the blind man we wonder what his story is, and we learn that he was born in Trinity Lane, Upper Thames Street, in the days when poor people did live on that side of the water, and that he was engaged at an early age in tide work.  “Coal trade,” he says, quietly.  “Seaham to London.  The Isabella brig.  Four or five years I had of that.  Then I was off to Russia in the Prince George.  Then I did the trade between England and America.  Then I was on a brig working the west coast of Africa.  After that I came home and married.  My wife lived in Fivefoot Lane.  Her father was a carpenter.  She was a good woman.  She’s dead now.  We buried a sight of little ’uns.  I can’t tell you how many.  There was a son, Harry:  we buried him; a girl, ’Liza:  we buried her; and a boy, Frank:  we buried him; but I can’t tell you how many little ’uns.  Buried a lot, we did.  Three children living now.  Doing fair, they are; pretty fair.  As times go, you know.  I dare say they’re happy enough.”

After all these years of seafaring Mr. Wells worked on Brewer’s Quay for eleven years, and after that took a spell of work in City warehouses.  He “entered the Fur Trade.”  He did good work and earned good money; but after a bit he got what he describes as “a bit of a blight” in the eyes.  He went to Moorfields hospital and underwent an operation.  The darkness didn’t lift.  The twilight in which he lived deepened.  He had to give up respectable work, and took to selling toys in the street.  Then, one day, he was knocked down by a cab, and was carried to hospital, where by good fortune he fell in with Father Vivian.  Father Vivian—­whose name is blessed to this day in I know not how many slum homes—­happened to want a companion for Joe, and Mr. Wells was pressed into the service.  The blind man came to take care of the paralytic, and here they now are in the little two-roomed slum cottage, smoking their pipes in the blackened kitchen, and declaring that they have never been so well off in their lives before.