“Your pardon, sir,” twittered Mr. Fett. “’Twas a foolish joke, I confess.”

“I may lend some point to it,” answered my father grimly, “by telling you what I had a mind to conceal, that you stand at this moment at no far remove from one of the worst dangers you have playfully invented.  The wind has dropped again, as you perceive.  Along the coast yonder live the worst pirates in the world, and with a glass we may all but discern the dreadful barracks in which so many hundreds of our fellow-Christians lie at this moment languishing.  Please God we are only visible from the hill-country, and coast tribes may miss to descry us!  For our goal lies north and east, and to fail of it would break my heart.  But ’twere a high enterprise for England some day to smoke out these robbers, and I know none to which a Christian man could more worthily engage himself.”

Mr. Badcock shivered.  “In our parish church,” said he, “we used to take up a collection for these poor prisoners every Septuagesima.  Many a sermon have I listened to and wondered at their sufferings, yet idly, as no doubt Axminster folk would wonder at this plight of mine, could they hear of it at this moment.”

“My father, his wrath being yet recent, did not spare to paint our peril of capture and the possible consequences in lively colours; but observing that Nat and I had drawn near to listen, he put on a cheerfuller tone.

“He will turn all this to the note of love, and within five minutes,” I whispered to Nat, “or I’ll forfeit five shillings.”

My father could not have heard me; yet pat on the moment he rose to the bet as a fish to a fly.

“Yet love,” said he, “love, the star of our quest, has shone before now into these dungeons, these dark ways of blood, these black and cruel hearts, and divinely illuminated them; as a score of histories bear witness, and among them one you shall hear.”

THE STORY OF THE ROVER AND THE LORD PROVOST’S DAUGHTER.

“In Edinburgh, in the Canongate, there stands a tenement known as Morocco Land, over the second floor of which leans forward, like a figure-head, the wooden statue of a Moor, black and naked, with a turban and a string of beads; and concerning this statue the following tale is told.

“In the reign of King James or King Charles I.—­I cannot remember which—­there happened a riot in Edinburgh.  Of its cause I am uncertain, but in the progress of it the mob, headed by a young man named Andrew Gray, set fire to the Lord Provost’s house.  The riot having been quelled, its ringleaders were seized and cast into the Tol-booth, and among them this Andrew Gray, who in due course was brought to judgment, and in spite of much private influence (for he came of good family) condemned to die.  Before the day of execution, however, his friends managed to spirit him out of prison, whence he fled the country; and so escaped and in time was forgotten.