ke," he said, "don't be offended with me!"

His voice startled me even more than his words; I had never heard
anything like it before. Low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor
fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest
emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. In the astonishment of
the moment, I forgot what Cristel had told me. I answered him as I should
have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me.

"What do you want?"

His hands dropped; his head sunk on his breast. "You are speaking, sir,
to a miserable creature who can't hear you. I am deaf."

I stepped nearer to him, intending to raise my voice in pity for his
infirmity. He shuddered, and signed to me to keep back.

"Don't come close to my ear; don't shout." As he spoke, strong excitement
flashed at me in his eyes, without producing the slightest change in his
voice. "I don't deny," he resumed, "that I can hear sometimes when people
take that way with me. They hurt when they do it. Their voices go through
my nerves as a knife might go through my flesh. I live at the mill, sir;
I have a great favour to ask. Will you come and speak to me in my
room--for five minutes only?"

I hesitated. Any other man in my place, would, I think, have done the
same; receiving such an invitation as this from a stranger, whose
pitiable infirmity seemed to place him beyond the pale of social
intercourse.

He must have guessed what was passing in my mind; he tried me again in
words which might have proved persuasive, had they been uttered in the
customary variety of tone.

"I can't help being a stranger to you; I can't help being deaf. You're a
young man. You look more merciful and more patient than young men in
general. Won't you hear what I have to say? Won't you tell me what I want
to know?"

How were we to communicate? Did he by any chance suppose that I had
learnt the finger alphabet? I touched my fingers and shook my head, as a
means of dissipating his delusion, if it existed.

He instantly understood me.

"Even if you knew the finger alphabet," he said, "it would be of no use.
I have been too miserable to learn it--my deafness only came on me a
little more than a year since. Pardon me if I am obliged to give you
trouble--I ask persons who pity me to write their answers when I speak to
them. Come to my room, and you will find what you want--a candle to write
by."

Was his will, as compared with mine, the stronger wi