Towards himself, there had been expressed a decided feeling, both of
sympathy and interest; if through means of these he could acquire his
liberty, he might, when possessed of freedom, turn it to the benefit of
those for whom he was more interested than for his own welfare. "I have
behaved like a fool," he said; "I ought to have temporised with this
singular being, learned the motives of its interference, and availed
myself of its succour, provided I could do so without any dishonourable
conditions. It would have been always time enough to reject such when
they should have been proposed to me."

So saying, he was forming projects for regulating his intercourse with
the stranger more prudently, in case their communication should be
renewed, when his meditations were interrupted by the peremptory summons
of Sir Geoffrey Hudson, that he would, in his turn, be pleased to
perform those domestic duties of their common habitation, which the
dwarf had yesterday taken upon himself.

There was no resisting a request so reasonable, and Peveril accordingly
rose and betook himself to the arrangement of their prison, while Sir
Hudson, perched upon a stool from which his legs did not by half-way
reach the ground, sat in a posture of elegant languor, twangling upon
an old broken-winded guitar, and singing songs in Spanish, Moorish,
and Lingua Franca, most detestably out of tune. He failed not, at the
conclusion of each ditty, to favour Julian with some account of what he
had sung, either in the way of translation, or historical anecdote, or
as the lay was connected with some peculiar part of his own eventful
history, in the course of which the poor little man had chanced to have
been taken by a Sallee rover, and carried captive into Morocco.

This part of his life Hudson used to make the era of many strange
adventures; and, if he could himself be believed, he had made wild work
among the affections of the Emperor's seraglio. But, although few were
in a situation to cross-examine him on gallantries and intrigues of
which the scene was so remote, the officers of the garrison of Tangier
had a report current amongst them, that the only use to which the
tyrannical Moors could convert a slave of such slender corporeal
strength, was to employ him to lie a-bed all day and hatch turkey's
eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh
frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which
began in wanton