“Han’t you won enough by your villany, but you must rob me of my daughter?  Are you not satisfied with bringing us to shame and ruin, but this poor girl of mine must be cast to the Turk?  Speak, rascal!” adds he, advancing a step, and seeking to provoke a conflict.  “Speak, if you have any reason to show why I shouldn’t strangle you.”

“You’ll not strangle me,” answers the Don, calmly, “and here’s my reason if you would see it.”  And with that he tilts his elbow, and with a turn of the wrist displays a long knife that lay concealed under his forearm.  “I know no other defence against the attack of a madman.”

“If I be mad,” says Dawson, “and mad indeed I may be, and no wonder,—­why, then, put your knife to merciful use and end my misery here.”

“Nay, take it in your own hand,” answers the Don, offering the knife.  “And use it as you will—­on yourself if you are a fool, or on me if, being not a fool, you can hold me guilty of such villany as you charged me with in your passion.”

Dawson looks upon the offered knife an instant with distraction in his eyes, and the Don (not to carry this risky business too far), taking his hesitation for refusal, claps up the blade in his waist-cloth, where it lay mighty convenient to his hand.

“You are wise,” says he, “for if that noble woman is to be served, ’tis not by spilling the blood of her best friends.”

“You, her friend!” says Dawson.

“Aye, her best friend!” replies the other, with dignity, “for he is best who can best serve her.”

“Then must I be her worst,” says Jack, humbly, “having no power to undo the mischief I have wrought.”

“Tell me, Senor,” says I, “who hath kidnapped poor Moll?”

“Nobody.  She went of her free will, knowing full well the risk she ran—­the possible end of her noble adventure—­against the dissuasions and the prayers of all her friends here.  She stood in the doorway there, and saw you cross the garden when you first came to seek her—­saw you, her father, distracted with grief and fear, and she suffered you to go away.  As you may know, nothing is more sacred to a Moor than the laws of hospitality, and by those laws Sidi was bound to respect the wishes of one who had claimed his protection.  He could not betray her secret, but he and his family did their utmost to persuade her from her purpose.  While you were yet in the town, they implored her to let them call you back, and she refused.  Failing in their entreaties, they despatched a messenger to me; alas! when I arrived, she was gone.  She went with a company of merchants bound for Alger, and all that her friends here could do was to provide her with a servant and letters, which will ensure her safe conduct to Thadviir.”

“But why has she gone there, Senor?” says I, having heard him in a maze of wonderment to the end.

“Cannot you guess?  Surely she must have given you some hint of her purposes, for ’twas in her mind, as I learn, when she agreed to leave England and come hither.”