my father, who'd be very angry if he knew I had taken
it."

Agnes was taken by surprise, and remained silent. She had been so
carefully trained to tell her father and mother everything, and to trust
them, that it was a new and disagreeable idea to her the thought of
doing anything secretly.

"Well, this is what I want," continued Ziffa; "I want you to listen to
the talk of Rais Ali and the sailor who lives with you, when they don't
know you are near, and tell me all that they say about a family named
Rimini--will you?"

"Oh, I can't do that," said Agnes decidedly; "it would be wrong."

"What would be wrong?" asked Mrs Langley, coming out from a side-walk
in the garden at that moment to fetch the children in to lunch.

Agnes blushed, looked down, and said nothing. Her mother at once
dropped the subject, and led them into the house, where she learned from
Agnes the nature of her little friend's proposal.

"Take no further notice of it, dear," said her mother, who guessed the
reason of the child's curiosity.

Leaving the friends at lunch in charge of Paulina Ruffini, she hastened
to find Ted Flaggan, whom she warned to be more careful how he conversed
with his friend Rais.

"What puzzles me, ma'am," said Ted, "is, how did the small critter
understand me, seein' that she's a Moor?"

"That is easily explained: we have been teaching her English for some
time, I regret to say, for the purpose of making her more of a companion
to my daughter, who is fond of her sprightly ways. I knew that she was
not quite so good a girl as I could have wished, but had no idea she was
so deceitful. Go, find Rais Ali at once, and put him on his guard,"
said Mrs Langley, as she left the seaman and returned to the house.

Now, if there ever was a man who could not understand either how to
deceive, or to guard against deception, or to do otherwise than take a
straight course, that man was Ted Flaggan, and yet Ted thought himself
to be an uncommonly sharp deceiver when occasion required.

Having received the caution above referred to, he thrust his hands into
his coat-pockets, and with a frowning countenance went off in search of
Rais Ali. Mariner-like, he descried him afar on the horizon of vision,
as it were, bearing down under full sail along a narrow path between two
hedges of aloes and cactus, which led to the house.

By a strange coincidence, Agnes and her friend came bounding out into
the shrubbery at that moment, having fi