L'S STORY

"After many adversities, joy."

_Moorish Proverb._

Outside the walls of Mazagan an English traveller had pitched his
camp. Night had fallen when one of his men, returning from the town,
besought admission to the tent.

"Well, how now?"

"Sir, I have a woman here, by thy leave, yes, a woman, a slave, whom
I found at the door of thy consulate, where she had taken refuge, but
the police guard drove her away, so I brought her to thee for justice.
Have pity on her, and God will reward thee! See, here! Rabhah!"

At this bidding there approached a truly pitiable object, a
dark-skinned woman, not quite black, though of decidedly negroid
appearance--whose tattered garments scarcely served to hide a
half-starved form. Throwing herself on the ground before the
foreigner, she begged his pity, his assistance, for the sake of the
Pitiful God.

"Oh, Bashador," she pleaded, addressing him as though a foreign envoy,
"I take refuge with God and with thee! I have no one else. I have fled
from my master, who has cruelly used me. See my back!"

Suiting action to word, she slipped aside the coverings from her
shoulder and revealed the weals of many a stripe, tears streaming down
her face the while. Her tones were such as none but a heart of stone
could ignore.

"I bore it ten days, sir, till I could do so no longer, and then I
escaped. It was all to make me give false witness--from which God
deliver me--for that I will never do. My present master is the Sheikh
bin Zaharah, Lieutenant Kaid of the Boo Azeezi, but I was once the
slave-wife of the English agent, who sold me again, though they said
that he dare not, because of his English protection. That was why I
fled for justice to the English consul, and now come to thee. For
God's sake, succour me!"

With a sob her head fell forward on her breast, as again she crouched
at the foreigner's feet, till made to rise and told to relate her
whole story quietly. When she was calmer, aided by questions, she
unfolded a tale which could, alas! be often paralleled in Morocco.

"My home? How can I tell thee where that was, when I was brought away
so early? All I know is that it was in the Sudan" (_i.e._ Land of
the Blacks), "and that I came to Mogador on my mother's back. In my
country the slave-dealers lie in wait outside the villages to catch
the children when they play. They put them in bags like those used for
grain, with their heads left outside the necks for air. So