ave
taken passage in a trader that sails tomorrow and will touch at Joppa
and Acre. Here is money to provide yourselves with garments and to carry
you to your homes. For you," he said to two who were natives of the
town, "I can myself find employment here, and if your conduct is good,
you will have no reason to regret taking service with me. The two of
you who desire to go to Smyrna I will give passage there in a ship which
will sail next week; in the meantime, here is money for your present
wants."

Two days later the merchant's family moved to his house two miles
outside the town, and here Gervaise remained for six months. His life
was not an unpleasant one; he was treated with great kindness by the
merchant and his wife, his duties were but slight, and he had no more
labour to perform in the garden than he cared to do. Nevertheless, he
felt that he would rather have fallen into the hands of a less kind
master, for it seemed to him that it would be an act almost of treachery
to escape from those who treated him as a friend; moreover, at the
country house he was not in a position to frame any plans for escape,
had he decided upon attempting it, nor could he have found out when
Hassan made one of his occasional visits to the port.

One evening the merchant returned from the town accompanied by one of
the sultan's officers and four soldiers. Ben Ibyn was evidently much
depressed and disturbed; he told Muley as he entered, to fetch Gervaise.
When the latter, in obedience to the order, came in from the garden, the
officer said in Italian, "It having come to the ears of the sultan my
master that the merchant Ben Ibyn has ventured, contrary to the law,
to purchase a Christian slave brought secretly into the town, he has
declared the slave to be forfeited and I am commanded to take him at
once to the slaves' quarter."

"I am at the sultan's orders," Gervaise said, bowing his head. "My
master has been a kind one, and I am grateful to him for his treatment
of me."

Gervaise, although taken aback by this sudden change in his fortunes,
was not so cast down as he might otherwise have been; he would now be
free to carry out any plan for escape that he might devise, and by his
being addressed in Italian it was evident to him that his knowledge
of Turkish was unsuspected. When among the other slaves he had always
maintained his character of a mute; and it was only when alone in his
master's family that he had spoken at all. He h