the fire of more southern suns than he had known; not the mere fading or dimming as of the fair faces of the North, but rich with an original and mellow colour of its own. Both had hair black as the raven’s wing. Their dress also was slightly different from anything Baithene was accustomed to. Round the man’s head were twisted folds of coloured linen; from the woman’s fell a veil of creamy white gathered gracefully round her throat and shoulders. As he looked, the two came forward, and at a signal to one of their British captors a conversation began which the brother and sister felt was an eager bargaining for their purchase. The Briton seemed to be insisting on their being sold in one lot—maiden, youth, and dog. The stranger, on the other hand, seemed to be endeavouring to separate them, apparently saying, not so much “_It is nought_,” as “I _have_ nought, or at least nothing equivalent to the value of the three together.” Unpleasant at it was to be thus haggled for, Baithene had a sense that the bargaining was more diplomatic than sincere. And at last, when the two dark-haired foreigners were turning away, and the British sailor laid his hands on Baithene and the dog to separate them from the maiden, the two turned back; and between the determination of the deer-hound and the pitifulness of the woman, the bargain was soon completed—Bran having expressed his opinion as to parting from Ethne in a way the British captor, remembering Dewi with “his leg bitten to the bone,” did not care to have repeated; whilst the dark-eyed woman, in a very unbusiness-like way, clasped the hands of both sister and brother appealingly in her own. So it came about that Ethne, Baithene, and the dog were led away from the slave-market by the two strangers, the British sailor following to receive at their own home the stipulated coins, which the old man would not on any account display in public. The dwelling of the strangers was in a remote corner of the city, with no appearance of wealth about it; and the purchaser seemed to draw the coins required reluctantly and with difficulty from a very limited store. The purchase, however, was duly completed, to the great relief of the captives, who might have been less reassured if they had heard the last words of the seller, when, after departing, he returned and said in a low voice to the buyer, “Only promise me one thing—that you will not _eat_ these children!” “_Eat_ them!” was the indignant retort; “we are no Tartar savages.” “Nevertheless,” was the sceptical reply, “I have heard a terrible story of some countrymen of yours who were driven out of a city in the far east for killing and eating a Christian child at some feast of theirs. If thou wilt solemnly promise me not to eat them,” he added (a spark of conscience suddenly flickering up from the ashes of his faith), “I will give thee back a hundredth part of the price.” And he held out some coins in his hand.