fants--at the same time intensifying the urbanity of his look
and the wheedlement of his tone. The gazelle suffered him to approach
until his fingers were within an inch of its nose. There the middy
stopped. He had studied animal nature. He was aware that it takes two
to love as well as to quarrel. He resolved to wait. Seeing this, the
gazelle timidly advanced its little nose and touched his finger. He
scratched gently! Spunkie seemed to like it. He scratched
progressively up its forehead. Spunkie evidently enjoyed it. He
scratched behind its ear, and--the victory was gained! The gazelle,
dismissing all fear, advanced and rubbed its graceful head on his
shoulder.

"Well, you _are_ a nice little beast," said Foster, as he fondled it;
"whoever owns you must be very kind to you, but I can't afford to waste
more time with you. Must get to work."

He rose and returned to his easel while the gazelle trotted to its
cushion and lay down--to sleep? perchance to dream?--no, to gaze, as
before, but in mitigated wonder.

The amateur painter-slave now applied himself diligently to his work
with ever-increasing interest; yet not altogether without an
uncomfortable and humiliating conviction that if he did not do it with
reasonable rapidity, and give moderate satisfaction, he ran the chance
of being "whacked" if not worse!

Let not the reader imagine that we are drawing the longbow here, and
making these Moors to be more cruel than they really were. Though
Ben-Ahmed was an amiable specimen, he was not a typical Algerine, for
cruelty of the most dreadful kind was often perpetrated by these
monsters in the punishment of trivial offences in those days. At the
present hour there stands in the great square of Algiers an imposing
mosque, which was designed by a Christian slave--an architect--whose
head was cut off because he had built it--whether intentionally or
accidentally we know not--in the form of a cross!

For some hours Foster worked uninterruptedly with his pencil, for he
believed, like our great Turner in his earlier days, (though Turner's
sun had not yet arisen!) that the preliminary drawing for a picture
cannot be too carefully or elaborately done.

After having bumped himself against the wall twice, and tripped over an
ottoman once--to the gazelle's intense surprise--in his efforts to take
an artistic view of his work, Foster at last laid down his pencil,
stretched himself to his full height, with his hand