d at him in horror.

"Do you mean, Rupert, that you have really embraced that idolatrous
sect?" I demanded.

"You need not look so scandalised, cousin," he retorted. "In the first
place you are quite wrong to call it idolatrous, images of every kind
being strictly forbidden by the Alcoran. In the second place it is a
very decent, respectable religion, as religions go, and extremely
convenient for seafaring men who sometimes need an excuse for
overhauling a Christian cargo."

"Rupert Gurney," I replied sternly, "you have within the hour brought
me away out of prison, and for that I thank you. But I will neither
listen to your blasphemous talk, nor suffer it, and rather than
consent to do so I will go back to the place from which you took me
but now."

"Fair and softly, young Athelstane," he answered grinning. "I see you
are as fierce a Puritan as ever, and as I have lost the wish to
quarrel with you I will endeavour to refrain from saying anything
offensive to your delicacy. But do you, on your part, abstain from
flying into a passion at every word that does not happen to sound to
your liking; for patience is a virtue recommended, as I believe, by
your religion as well as mine, and it seems to me that your stock of
it is rather scant."

I cannot say how deeply mortified I was by this rebuke, which, coming
from one whose evil life I held in just detestation, wrought more
conviction in me than all the sermons I had heard from good Mr. Peter
Walpole of Norwich, when I was a boy. I discovered, as though by a
flash of light, how unchristian was the temper I had too often shown
in my dealings, not only with my cousin, but with other persons, and
from that moment I set an earnest watch on myself in this respect.

Forcing myself to acknowledge my error at once, though much against
the grain, I said--

"I ask your pardon, Rupert, if I spoke harshly. But let us leave these
questions, and come to the business in hand. What of Marian, and how
do you propose that we should effect her escape?"

He looked at me surprised.

"Why, Athelstane, my boy, give me your hand!" he exclaimed, in a more
cordial tone than I had ever heard him use before. "Curse me if I
don't heartily wish we had never quarrelled!" I gave him my hand with
some reluctance, and he proceeded. "You saw that garden which we
passed on our way to this spot? The girl is detained a prisoner in one
of the Nabob's summer-houses which stand within it. I have found m