"I know how you must feel, Hattie May," said Eve sympathetically. "But I suppose Hamish felt that what he had to do was a man's job----"
"Man's job!" she interrupted, with a scornful snort.
"Well he felt that girls around would sort of gum things up. He sent us packing in pretty short order."
"Then he came?" she asked with curiosity. "Did anything happen?"
I told her about Aunt Cal's interruption of the vigil and then about the departure of the mysterious stranger from the house next door.
"My goodness," she exclaimed when I had finished. "Then there is something to it. The man's a crook or he wouldn't sneak off like that in the dead of night. I certainly am glad Hamish wasn't there to see him, though. Why he might have been trailing the man yet, he might even have followed him onto a ship and gone to sea!"
"Well, you know persistence is a fine quality," I remarked.
"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to stand up for him but you didn't spend the night under lock and key. I kept waking up and thinking what I would do if there was a fire, and I thought how Hamish would feel when he gazed at my charred body!"
"Oh, well, there wasn't any fire and you spent a comfortable night in bed instead of on the damp ground," Eve said soothingly.
Hattie May seemed to be thinking. "I do think it's a crime that a man like that should be allowed to escape," she said at last. "I wonder if Hamish knows about it?"
"Well, since you're not on speaking terms with him," I giggled, "I don't see how you're going to find out. Besides if you're leaving on the afternoon train----"
"Oh, I suppose I'd better stick around," Hattie May said. "We can't be sure that the fellow has gone back to sea and--there's the key!"
But for all Hattie May's sticking around, no more was seen of Captain Trout's mysterious visitor. Aunt Cal reported to the local constable that a tramp attempted to pass the night in her yard and the following evening we saw a uniformed figure peering over our hedge just after dusk. But apparently discouraged by his failure to round up anything more criminal than Daisy June chasing fireflies, he soon abandoned the pursuit and retired--we guessed--along with other respectable citizens to the shelter of his own roof.