‘And how are they to find ye?’ demanded Yusuf.  ’Abou Ben Zegri will never keep you here after having evened his gude-daughter to ye.  He’ll sell you to some corsair captain, and then the best that could betide ye wad be that a shot frae the Knights of Malta should make quick work wi’ ye.  Or look at the dumbie there, Fareek.  A Christian, he ca’s himsel’, too, though ‘tis of a by ordinar’ fashion, such as Deacon Shortcoats would scarce own.  I coft him dog cheap at Tunis, when his master, the Vizier, had had his tongue cut out—­for but knowing o’ some deed that suld ne’er have been done—­and his puir feet bastinadoed to a jelly.  Gin a’ the siller in the Dey’s treasury ransomed ye, what gude would it do ye after that?’

’I cannot help that—­I cannot forsake my God.  I must trust Him not to forsake me.’

And, as usual, Yusuf went off angrily muttering, ’He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar.’

Perhaps Arthur’s resistance had begun more for the sake of honour, and instinctive clinging to hereditary faith, without the sense of heroism or enthusiasm for martyrdom which sustained Estelle, and rather with the feeling that inconstancy to his faith and his Lord would be base and disloyal.  But, as the long days rolled on, if the future of toil and dreary misery developed itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him.  Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation.  He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little Ulysse from unconscious apostacy.

Once Yusuf observed, that if he would only make outward submission to Moslem law, he might retain his own belief and trust in the Lord he seemed so much to love, and of whom he said more good than any Moslem did of the Prophet.

‘If I deny Him, He will deny me,’ said Arthur.

‘And will na He forgive ane as is hard pressed?’ asked Yusuf.

’It is a very different thing to go against the light, as I should be doing,’ said Arthur, ’and what it might be for that poor bairn, whom Cod preserve.’

’And wow! sir.  ‘Tis far different wi’ you that had the best of gude learning frae the gude leddy,’ muttered Yusuf.  ’My minnie aye needit me to sort the fish and gang her errands, and wad scarce hae sent me to scule, gin I wad hae gane where they girned at me for Partan Jeannie’s wean, and gied me mair o’ the tawse than of the hornbook.  Gin the Lord, as ye ca’ Him, had ever seemed to me what ye say He is to you, Maister Arthur, I micht hae thocht twice o’er the matter.  But there’s nae ganging back the noo.  A Christian’s life they harm na, though they mak’ it a mere weariness to him; but for him that quits the Prophet, tearing the flesh wi’ iron cleeks is the best they hae for him.’