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296 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.