s a post, and like a good
many deaf people thought it necessary to speak very loud to make
himself heard.

"Playing," answered Martin innocently. But he could not make the old
man hear until he stood up on tip-toe and shouted out his answer as
loud as he could.

"Playing," exclaimed the old man. "Well, I never in all my life!
When there ain't a house 'cepting my own for leagues and leagues,
and he says he's playing! What may you be now?" he shouted again.

"A little boy," screamed Martin.

"I knowed that afore I axed," said the other. Then he slapped his
legs and held up his hands with astonishment, and at last began to
chuckle. "Will you come home along o' me?" he shouted.

"Will you give me something to eat?" asked Martin in return.

"Haw, haw, haw," guffawed the old fellow. It was a tremendous laugh,
so loud and hollow, it astonished and almost frightened Martin to
hear it. "Well I never!" he said. "He ain't no fool, neither. Now,
old Jacob, just you take your time and think a bit afore you makes
your answer to that."

This curious old man, whose name was Jacob, had lived so long by
himself that he always thought out loud--louder than other people
talk: for, being deaf, he could not hear himself, and never had a
suspicion that he could be heard by others.

"He's lost, that's what he is," continued old Jacob aloud to himself.
"And what's more, he's been and gone and forgot all about his own
home, and all he wants is summat to eat. I'll take him and keep him,
that's what I'll do: for he's a stray lamb, and belongs to him that
finds him, like any other lamb I finds. I'll make him believe I'm
his old dad; for he's little and will believe most anything you
tells him. I'll learn him to do things about the house--to boil the
kettle, and cook the wittels, and gather the firewood, and mend the
clothes, and do the washing, and draw the water, and milk the cow,
and dig the potatoes, and mind the sheep and--and--and that's what
I'll learn him. Then, Jacob, you can sit down and smoke your pipe,
'cos you'll have some one to do your work for you."

Martin stood quietly listening to all this, not quite understanding
the old man's kind intentions. Then old Jacob, promising to give him
something to eat, pulled him up on to his horse, and started home at
a gallop.

Soon they arrived at a mud hovel, thatched with rushes, the roof
sloping down so low that one could almost step on to it; it was
surrounded with a ditch, and h