"All that may be, but I have found him once before hanging around that door to-day."

At this moment Mulgrum took from his pocket a tablet of paper and a 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.

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48

 CHAPTER IV

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 49 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.

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"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 

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