He made a grimace of deprecation.
"Have I permitted my feelings to show themselves?" he asked, and shook his head mournfully. "I told Mr. Mountjoy last night that I was aging; I reckon it is only too true. I have a trifle laid by, and when it amounts to enough to purchase a little home—like this—say—where I can have plenty of flowers, you'll never hear of me interfering with any more such cases; no, indeed. You may laugh, my boy, but it is a fact.... I should say now, as a guess, that one of the three times when you saw Miss Joyce was night before last, eh?"
"Yes, sir," was the reply.
And so it may be seen that, however old the Captain might be, he had not forgotten the wisdom of Polonius's admonition to "give every man thine ear, but few thy voice." Their eager questions remained unanswered, and they failed to note.
"I wish you would tell me what you were doing in the Westbrook yard," Converse continued; "what you saw and heard while there."
"Did Joyce speak of that?" was the unnecessarily cautious response.
"In a way, yes; but I want impressions at first hand."
The young man considered a while before proceeding.
"Well, you know about our code of signals," he said at length, "mine and Joyce's. I arranged that code, and was very proud of it until we attempted to use it; then a difficulty arose: Joyce's inability to read half the signals, and mine to read the other half. Still, the chief object was attained: nightly we assured each other of our well-being, and I was enabled to glean pretty well how affairs were progressing.
"But there were one or two occasions when I was left in a perplexing doubt. I became intolerably anxious and impatient, and throwing caution to the winds, I met Joyce in her yard. Our signals of meeting, fortunately, were never difficult of interpretation.