pencil, and wrote upon it, "I am a deaf mute, and I don't know what you
are talking about." Christy read it, and then wrote, "What were you
doing at the door?" He replied that he had been sent by Mr. Lillyworth
to clean the brasses on the door. He was then dismissed.

CHAPTER IV

A DEAF AND DUMB MYSTERY

As he dismissed Mulgrum, Christy tore off the leaf from the tablet on
which both of them had written before he handed it back to the owner.
For a few moments, he said nothing, and had his attention fixed on the
paper in his hand, which he seemed to be studying for some reason of his
own.

"That man writes a very good hand for one in his position," said he,
looking at the first lieutenant.

"I had noticed that before," replied Flint, as the commander handed
him the paper, which he looked over with interest. "I had some talk with
him on his tablet the day he came on board. He strikes me as a very
intelligent and well-educated man."

"Was he born a deaf mute?" asked Christy.

"I did not think to ask him that question; but I judged from the
language he used and his rapid writing that he was well educated. There
is character in his handwriting too; and that is hardly to be expected
from a deaf mute," replied Flint.

"Being a deaf mute, he can not have been shipped as a seaman, or even as
an ordinary steward," suggested the captain.

"Of course not; he was employed as a sort of scullion to be worked
wherever he could make himself useful. Mr. Nawood engaged him on the
recommendation of Mr. Lillyworth," added Flint, with something like a
frown on his brow, as though he had just sounded a new idea.

"Have you asked Mr. Lillyworth anything about him?"

"I have not; for somehow Mr. Lillyworth and I don't seem to be very
affectionate towards each other, though we get along very well together.
But Mulgrum wrote out for me that he was born in Cherryfield, Maine, and
obtained his education as a deaf mute in Hartford. I learned the deaf
and dumb alphabet when I was a schoolmaster, as a pastime, and I had
some practice with it in the house where I boarded."

"Then you can talk in that way with Mulgrum."

"Not a bit of it; he knows nothing at all about the deaf and dumb
alphabet, and could not spell out a single word I gave him."

"That is very odd," added the captain musing.

"So I thought; but he explained it by saying that at the school they
were changing this method of communication for that of actually spe