“What!” he cries as we came up.  “You knew all this two months ago?”

“Yes, father,” answers she, primly, “quite two months.”

“And pray who told you?” he asks.

“No one, father, since you forbade me to ask questions.  But though I may be dumb to oblige you, I can’t be deaf.  Kit and you are for ever a-talking of it.”

“Maybe, child,” says Dawson, mightily nettled.  “Maybe you know why we left Alicante this morning.”

“I should be dull indeed if I didn’t,” answers she.  “And if you hadn’t said when we saw the ships that we might meet more Englishmen in the town than we might care to know hereafter, why,—­well, maybe we should have been in Alicante now.”

“By denying yourself that satisfaction,” says Don Sanchez, “we may conclude that the future we are making for you is not unacceptable.”

Moll stopped and says with some passion: 

“I would turn back now and go over those mountains the way we came to ride through France in my fine gown like a lady.”

“Brava! bravamente!” says the Don, in a low voice, as she steps on in front of us, holding her head high with the recollection of her former state.

“She was ever like that,” whispers Dawson, with pride.  “We could never get her to play a mean part willingly; could we, Kit?  She was for ever wanting the part of a queen writ for her.”

The next day about sundown, coming to a little eminence, Don Sanchez points out a dark patch of forest lying betwixt us and the mountains, and says: 

“That is Elche, the place where we are to stay some months.”

We could make out no houses at all, but he told us the town lay in the middle of the forest, and added some curious particulars as how, lying on flat ground and within easy access of the sea, it could not exist at all but for the sufferance of the Spaniards on one side and of the Barbary pirates on the other, how both for their own convenience respected it as neutral ground on which each could exchange his merchandise without let or hindrance from the other, how the sort of sanctuary thus provided was never violated either by Algerine or Spaniard, but each was free to come and go as he pleased, etc., and this did somewhat reassure us, though we had all been more content to see our destination on the crest of a high hill.

From this point we came in less than half an hour to Santa Pola, a small village, but very bustling, for here the cart-road from Alicante ends, all transport of commodities betwixt this and Elche being done on mules; so here great commotion of carriers setting down and taking up merchandise, and the way choked with carts and mules and a very babel of tongues, there being Moors here as well as Spaniards, and all shouting their highest to be the better understood of each other.  These were the first Moors we had seen, but they did not encourage us with great hopes of more intimate acquaintance, wearing nothing but a kind of long, ragged shirt to their heels, with a hood for their heads in place of a hat, and all mighty foul with grease and dirt.