y?"

"She sailed three days ago," says the Don, laying down his pipe, and
rising.

Dawson regards him for a moment or two in a kind of stupor, and then his
ideas taking definite shape, he cries in a fury of passion and clenching
his fists:

"Spanish dog! you shall answer this. And you" (turning in fury upon
Sidi), "you--I know your cursed traffic--you've sold her to the Turk!"

Though Sidi may have failed to comprehend his words, he could not
misunderstand his menacing attitude, yet he faced him with an unmoved
countenance, not a muscle of his body betraying the slightest fear, his
stoic calm doing more than any argument of words to overthrow Dawson's
mad suspicion. But his passion unabated, Dawson turns again upon Don
Sanchez, crying:

"Han't you won enough by your villany, but you must rob me of my
daughter? Are you not satisfied with bringing us to shame and ruin, but
this poor girl of mine must be cast to the Turk? Speak, rascal!" adds
he, advancing a step, and seeking to provoke a conflict. "Speak, if you
have any reason to show why I shouldn't strangle you."

"You'll not strangle me," answers the Don, calmly, "and here's my reason
if you would see it." And with that he tilts his elbow, and with a turn
of the wrist displays a long knife that lay concealed under his forearm.
"I know no other defence against the attack of a madman."

"If I be mad," says Dawson, "and mad indeed I may be, and no
wonder,--why, then, put your knife to merciful use and end my misery
here."

"Nay, take it in your own hand," answers the Don, offering the knife.
"And use it as you will--on yourself if you are a fool, or on me if,
being not a fool, you can hold me guilty of such villany as you charged
me with in your passion."

Dawson looks upon the offered knife an instant with distraction in his
eyes, and the Don (not to carry this risky business too far), taking his
hesitation for refusal, claps up the blade in his waist-cloth, where it
lay mighty convenient to his hand.

"You are wise," says he, "for if that noble woman is to be served, 'tis
not by spilling the blood of her best friends."

"You, her friend!" says Dawson.

"Aye, her best friend!" replies the other, with dignity, "for he is best
who can best serve her."

"Then must I be her worst," says Jack, humbly, "having no power to undo
the mischief I have wrought."

"Tell me, Senor," says I, "who hath kidnapped poor Moll?"

"Nobody. She went of her free will, knowi