business is thine, not mine."

"Whether my motive be interested or not you are well able to judge,"
returned Bacri gently, "for the slaves are poor and helpless; they are
also Christians, and you know well that the Jews have no love for the
Christians; in which respect it seems to me that they bear some
resemblance to the men of other creeds."

Sidi Hassan felt that there was an intended sarcasm in the last remark,
but the thought of the dollars induced him to waive further discussion.

"Do you wish to sell the girl?" said Bacri in a casual way, as though it
had just occurred to him.

"Ay, but I must have a good price for her," replied the Turk.

"Name it," said the Jew; "my wife has need of a handmaiden just now."

Hassan named a sum much larger than he had any expectation the Jew would
give. To his surprise, the other at once agreed to it.

"Why, Bacri," he said, with a smile, as with his right hand he tenderly
caressed his injured nose, "you must have been more than usually
successful in swindling of late."

"God has recently granted me more than deserved prosperity," returned
the other.

Without further palaver the bargain was struck. Hassan accompanied the
Jew to his residence in one of the quaint Moorish houses of the old
town. Angela was handed over to Bacri's wife, a pleasant-visaged woman
of forty, and Hassan returned home with his pockets well lined, his nose
much swelled, and his temper greatly improved.

Bethinking him of the Dey's commands, he set out with Paulina and her
infant for the residence of the British consul, which lay a short
distance outside the northern wall of the town, not far from the bluff
height on which, at the present day, towers the picturesque pile of
Notre-Dame d'Afrique.

CHAPTER SIX.

SENDS A GLEAM OF HOPE INTO A GLOOMY REGION.

The short twilight of southern latitudes was giving place to the shades
of night, when Bacri the Jew issued from the low door of his house, and
threaded the narrow labyrinth of streets which compose the old town of
Algiers.

The greater part of the old, or, as it is styled, the Moorish town,
remains almost exactly the same at the present time that it was at the
time of which our tale treats. It occupied the face of a steep hill,
and was built in the form of a triangle, the apex being a fort, or
"casba," near the summit of the hill. The base was a street of oriental
houses upwards of half a mile in extent, beyond which the sea-wall,