Meantime Arthur was free to wander about unmolested and pick up the language, in which, however, Ulysse made far more rapid progress, and could be heard chattering away as fast, if not as correctly, as if it were French or English.  The delicious climate and the open-air life were filling the little fellow with a strength and vigour unknown to him in a Parisian salon, and he was in the highest spirits among his brown playfellows, ceasing to pine for his mother and sister; and though he still came to Arthur for the night, or in any trouble, it was more and more difficult to get him to submit to be washed and dressed in his tight European clothes, or to say his prayers.  He was always sleepy at night and volatile in the morning, and could not be got to listen to the little instructions with which Arthur tried to arm him against Mohammedanism into which the poor little fellow was likely to drift as ignorantly and unconsciously as Yusuf himself.

And what was the alternative?  Arthur himself never wavered, nor indeed actually felt that he had a choice; but the prospect before him was gloomy, and Yusuf did not soften it.  The sheyk would sell him, and he would either be made to work in some mountain-farm, or put on board a galley; and Yusuf had sufficient experience of the horrors of the latter to assure him emphatically that the gude leddy of Burnside would break her heart to think of her bonny laddie there.

’It would more surely break her heart to think of her son giving up his faith,’ returned Arthur.

As to the child, the opinion of the tribe seemed to be that he was just fit to be sent to the Sultan to be bred as a Janissary.  ’He will come that gate to be as great a man as in his ain countree,’ said Yusuf; ‘wi’ horse to ride, and sword to bear, and braws to wear, like King Solomon in all his glory.’

’While his father and mother would far rather he were lying dead with her under the waves in that cruel bay,’ returned Arthur.

’Hout, mon, ye dinna ken what’s for his gude, nor for your ain neither,’ retorted Yusuf.

‘Good here is not good hereafter.’

‘The life of a dog and waur here,’ muttered Yusuf; ’ye’ll mind me when it is too late.’

’Nay, Yusuf, if you will only take word of our condition to Algiers, we shall—­at least the boy—­be assuredly redeemed, and you would win a high reward.’

‘I am no free to gang to Algiers,’ said Yusuf.  ’I fell out with a loon there, one of those Janissaries that gang hectoring aboot as though the world were not gude enough for them, and if I hadna made the best of my way out of the toon, my pow wad be a worricow on the wa’s of the tower.’

’There are French at Bona, you say.  Remember, I ask you to put yourself in no danger, only to bear the tidings to any European,’ entreated Arthur.