nished their brief luncheon, and
Ziffa chanced to catch sight of the stout mariner as he hastened to meet
his friend.

With the intuitive sharpness of an Eastern mind she observed the fact,
and with the native acuteness of a scheming little vixen, she guessed
that something _might_ turn up. Acting on the thought, she shouted--

"Wait a little, Agnes; I will hide: you shall find me."

Innocent Agnes obediently waited, while Ziffa ran down the wrong side of
the cactus hedge, and kept up with the seaman--a little in rear of him.

"Ho! Ally Babby," shouted Ted Flaggan, when he was within hail--it
might be a hundred yards or so--of his friend, "what d'ee think? that
little brown-faced chip of Hadji Baba has been up here eavesdropping,
and has got to windward of us a'most. Leastwise she knows enough o' the
Riminis to want to know more--the dirty little spalpeen."

"Thank you," thought Ziffa, as she listened.

When Flaggan had varied his remarks once or twice, by way of translating
them, Rais Ali shook his head.

"That bad," said he, "ver' bad. We mus' be tremendous cautious.
Ziffa's a little brute."

"Ha!" thought Ziffa.

"You don't say so?" observed Flaggan. "Well, now, I'd scarce have
thought we had reason to be so fearful of a small thing, with a stupid
brown face like that."

"Brute!" muttered Ziffa inaudibly.

"Oh! she werry sharp chile," returned Rais, "werry sharp--got ears and
eyes from the sole of hers head to de top of hers feets."

Ziffa said nothing, either mentally or otherwise, but looked rather
pleased.

"Well," continued Rais, "we won't mention the name of Rimini again
nowhars--only w'en we can't help it, like."

"Not a whisper," said Flaggan; "but, be the way, it'll be as well,
before comin' to that state of prudent silence, that you tell me if the
noo hole they've gone to is near the owld wan. You see it's my turn to
go up wi' provisions to-morrow night, and I hain't had it rightly
explained, d'ye see?"

Here Rais Ali described, with much elaboration, the exact position of
the new hole to which the Rimini family had removed, at the head of
Frais Vallon, and Mademoiselle Ziffa drank it all in with the most
exuberant satisfaction.

Shortly afterwards Agnes Langley found her friend hiding close to the
spot in the garden where she had last seen her.

That night Hadji Baba made an outrageous disturbance in his household as
to the lost diamond ring, and finally fixed, with the sagacity