"Perhaps I am a fool," I said. "Yet if I know nothing of your plan and so am inclined to misconstrue it, whose fault is that?"
He dropped knife and fork and fixed me with his eyes, so marvelously alive and bright in their setting of crow's feet and wrinkles, so luminous with youth.
"Those are the first words you have spoken which have had any tinge of kindness to them," he answered.
"I am not kind," I denied; "but curious. You have torn me out of my natural course and thrown me into a network of intrigue of which I know nothing. You would have me think well of you and work with you, but you have not taken the ordinary pains to acquaint me with your purposes and the part you have designed for me."
Peter sat back with a sigh of content, his plate empty.
"Ja, Murray, you don't say much," he said in his squeaky voice. "You don't tell dot feller Flint so much as wouldt gife him der trail."
I had not observed this, and I felt secretly ashamed. My great-uncle smiled.
"Stap me, but I might ha' known you would see it, Peter!" he exclaimed. "Now, tell me: Why did not Flint ask me the treasure-ship's course and port o' sailing? Did he not think to in his fuddlement with the rum? Or did he know I would not tell him and reckon to save his tongue?"
"He knows you, ja," answered Peter.
Murray nodded.