ate captain
obeyed his summons. He thanked him for the two pretty slave-girls he
had brought in, commended him for his success in taking prizes, and
added that he had appointed him to fill the office of attendant
janissary upon the British consul.

Up to this point Sidi Hassan had listened with satisfaction, but the
appointment just offered seemed to him so contemptible that he had
difficulty in dissembling his feelings. The knowledge, however, that
his despotic master held his life in his hand, induced him to bow and
smile, as if with gratitude.

"And now," said the Dey, "I have a commission for you. Go to the
British consul, tell him of your appointment, and present him with my
compliments and with the eldest slave-girl and her infant as a gift from
me. Paulina is her name, is it not?"

"Yes, your highness--Paulina Ruffini, and the sister's name is Angela
Diego."

"Good. Angela you may keep to yourself," continued the Dey, as coolly
as if he had been talking of a silver snuff-box.

Hassan again bowed and smiled, and again had to constrain his
countenance to express gratification, though he was not a little
disgusted with Achmet's indifference to the captive girls.

Leaving the palace in a state of high indignation, he resolved to sell
Angela in the public market, although by so doing he could not hope to
gain so much as would have been the case were he to have disposed of her
by private bargain. Thus, with strange perversity, does an angry man
often stand in the way of his own interests.

We need scarcely say that, when their fate was announced to the unhappy
sisters, they were plunged into a state of wild grief, clung to each
other's necks, and refused to be separated.

Little did Sidi Hassan care for their grief. He tore them asunder,
locked Paulina up with her infant, and led the weeping Angela to the
slave-market, which was in the immediate neighbourhood of one of the
largest mosques of the city.

This mosque, named Djama Djedid, still stands, under the name of the
Mosquee de la Pecherie, one of the most conspicuous and picturesque
buildings in Algiers. It was built in the seventeenth century by a
Genoese architect, a slave, who, unfortunately for himself built it in
the form of a cross, for which he was put to death by the reigning Dey.
In front of the northern door of this mosque the narrow streets of the
city gave place to a square, in which was held the market for Christian
slaves.

Here