ves," says the Atlas Moor, rather bitterly, for the
fifth and last girl child has gone up beyond his limit. "In the Mellah or
the Madinah you can get labour for nothing, now the Sultan is in Fez.
There is hunger in many a house, and it is hard for a free man to find
food. But slaves are well fed. In times of famine and war free men die;
slaves are in comfort. Why then do the Nazarenes talk of freeing slaves,
as though they were prisoners, and seek to put barriers against the
market, until at last the prices become foolish? Has not the Prophet
said, 'He who behaveth ill to his slave shall not enter into Paradise'?
Does that not suffice believing people? Clearly it was written, that my
little Mohammed, my first born, my only one, shall have no playmate this
day. No, Tsamanni: I will bid no more. Have I such store of dollars that I
can buy a child for its weight in silver?"

The crowd is thinning now. Less than ten slaves remain to be sold, and I
do not like to think how many times they must have tramped round the
market. Men and women--bold, brazen, merry, indifferent--have passed to
their several masters; all the children have gone; the remaining oldsters
move round and round, their shuffling gait, downcast eyes, and melancholy
looks in pitiful contrast to the bright clothes in which they are dressed
for the sale, in order that their own rags may not prejudice purchasers.

Once again the storks from the saint's tomb pass over the market in large
wide flight, as though to tell the story of the joy of freedom. It is the
time of the evening promenade. The sun is setting rapidly and the sale is
nearly at an end.

"Forty-one dollars--forty-one," cries the dilal at whose heels the one
young and pretty woman who has not found a buyer limps painfully. She is
from the Western Soudan, and her big eyes have a look that reminds me of
the hare that was run down by the hounds a few yards from me on the
marshes at home in the coursing season.

"Why is the price so low?" I ask.

"She is sick," said the Moor coolly: "she cannot work--perhaps she will
not live. Who will give more in such a case? She is of kaid Abdeslam's
household, though he bought her a few weeks before his fall, and she must
be sold. But the dilal can give no warranty, for nobody knows her
sickness. She is one of the slaves who are bought by the dealers for the
rock salt of El Djouf."

Happily the woman seems too dull or too ill to feel her own position. She
moves