able to read and write the Moorish character and speak the tongue readily, answer aptly as to their ways and habits, and to do these things beyond suspect. Moll must live with these people for some months."
"God have mercy on us!" cries Jack. "Your honour is not for taking us to Barbary."
"No," answers the Don, dryly, passing his long ringers with some significance over the many seams in his long face, "but we must go where the Moors are to be found, on the hither side of the straits."
"Well," says Dawson, "all's as one whither we go in safety if we're to be out of our fortune for a year. There's nothing more for our Moll to learn, I suppose, Señor."
"It will not be amiss to teach her the manners of a lady," replies the Don, rising and knitting his brows together unpleasantly, "and especially to keep her feet under her chair at table."
With this he rings the bell for our reckoning, and so ends our discussion, neither Dawson nor I having a word to say in answer to this last hit, which showed us pretty plainly that in reaching round with her long leg for our shins, Moll had caught the Don's shanks a kick that night she was seized with a cough.
So to horse again and a long jog back to Greenwich, where Dawson and I would fain have rested the night (being unused to the saddle and very raw with our journey), but the Don would not for prudence, and therefore, after changing our clothes, we make a shift to mount once more, and thence another long horrid jolt to Edmonton very painfully.
Coming to the Bell (more dead than alive) about eight,
