There ensued outside the shrieking and roaring which always accompanied a bargain, and which lasted two full hours.  Finally Yusuf looked into the hut, and roughly said in Arabic, ’Come over to me, dog; thou art mine.  Kiss the shoe of thy master’—­adding in his native tongue, ’For ance, sir.  It maun be done before these loons.’

Certainly the ceremony would have been felt as less humiliating towards almost anybody else, but Arthur endured it; and then was led away to the tents beyond the gate.

‘There, sir,’ said Yusuf, ’it ill sorts your father’s son to be in sic a case, but it canna be helpit.  I culd na leave behind the bonny Scots tongue, let alane the gude Leddy Hope’s son.’

‘You have been very good to me, Yusuf,’ said Arthur, his pride much softened by the merchant’s evident sense of the situation.  ’I know you mean me well, but the boy—­’

‘Hoots! the bairn is happy eno’.  He will come to higher preferment than even you or I. Why, mon, an Aga of the Janissaries is as good as the Deuk himsel’.’

’Yusuf, I am very grateful—­I believe you must have paid heavily to spare me from ill usage.’

’Ye may say that, sir.  Forty piastres of Tunis, and eight mules, and twa pair of silver-mounted pistols.  The extortionate rogue wad hae had the little dagger, but I stood out against that.’

‘I see, I am deeply beholden,’ said Arthur; ’but it would be tenfold better if you would take him instead of me!’

’What for suld I do that?  He is nae countryman of mine—­one side French and the other Irish.  He is naught to me.’

‘He is heir to a noble house,’ waged Arthur.  ’They will reward you amply for saving him.’

’Mair like to girn at me for a Moor.  Na, na!  Hae na I dune enough for ye, Maister Arthur—­giving half my beasties, and more than half my silver?  Canna ye be content without that whining bairn?’

’I should be a forsworn man to be content to leave the child, whose dead mother prayed me to protect him, and those who will turn him from her faith.  See, now, I am a man, and can guard myself, by the grace of God; but to leave the poor child here would be letting these men work their will on him ere any ransom could come.  His mother would deem it giving him up to perdition.  Let me remain here, and take the helpless child.  You know how to bargain.  His price might be my ransom.’

’Ay, when the jackals and hyenas have picked your banes, or you have died under the lash, chained to the oar, as I hae seen, Maister Arthur.’

‘Better so than betray the dead woman’s trust.  How no—­’

For there was a pattering of feet, a cry of ‘Arthur, Arthur!’ and sobbing, screaming, and crying, Ulysse threw himself on his friend’s breast.  He was pursued by one or two of the hangers-on of the sheyk’s household, and the first comer seized him by the arm; but he clung to Arthur, screamed and kicked, and the old nurse who had come hobbling after coaxed in vain.  He cried out in a mixture of Arabic and French that he would sleep with Arthur—­Arthur must put him to bed; no one should take him away.