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.