fields. He slept in a small room at the top of the house, under the
eaves, and ate with the man and woman in the farmhouse kitchen.

It was not long before he picked up a few words which he had heard his
employers using, and related them to the things or acts spoken of. And
he began to notice that these people, in spite of the crudities of their
own life, enjoyed some of the advantages of a fairly complex
civilization. Their implements were not hand-craft products, but showed
machine workmanship. There were two objects hanging on hooks on the
kitchen wall which he was sure were weapons. Both had wooden
shoulder-stocks, and wooden fore-pieces; they had long tubes extending
to the front, and triggers like blasters. One had double tubes mounted
side-by-side, and double triggers; the other had an octagonal tube
mounted over a round tube, and a loop extension on the trigger-guard.
Then, there was a box on the kitchen wall, with a mouthpiece and a
cylindrical tube on a cord. Sometimes a bell would ring out of the box,
and the woman would go to this instrument, take down the tube and hold
it to her ear, and talk into the mouthpiece. There was another box from
which voices would issue, of people conversing, or of orators, or of
singing, and sometimes instrumental music. None of these were objects
made by savages; these people probably traded with some fairly high
civilization. They were not illiterate; he found printed matter,
indicating the use of some phonetic alphabet, and paper pamphlets
containing printed reproductions of photographs as well as verbal text.

There was also a vehicle on the farm, powered, like the one he had seen
on the road, by an engine in which a hydrocarbon liquid-fuel was
exploded. He made it his business to examine this minutely, and to study
its construction and operation until he was thoroughly familiar with it.