Rosina gazed at her mulatto lover in rueful silence. She liked the English stranger—he had given her a shilling one day to post a letter for him—but still, she daren’t go back upon Isaac and Louis Delgado. ‘Him is fren’ ob Mistah Hawtorn,’ she murmured apologetically at last after a minute’s severe reflection—‘great fren’ ob Mistah Hawtorn. Dem is old-time fren’ in Englan’ togedder; and when Mistah Tom Dupuy speak bad ’bout Mistah Hawtorn, Mistah Noel him flare up like angry naygur, an’ him gib him de lie, an’ him speak out well for him!’ Delgado checked himself, and looked closely at the hesitating negress with more deliberation. ‘Him is fren’ ob Mistah Hawtorn,’ he said in a meditative voice—‘him is fren’ ob Mistah Hawtorn! De fren’ ob de Lard’s fren’ shall come to no harm. I gwine to tell Tom Dupuy. I must humble de buckra. But in de great an’ terrible day, dem shall not hurt a hair of him head, if de Lard wills it.’ And then he added somewhat louder, in his own sonorous and mystic Arabic: ‘The effendi’s brother is dear to Allah even as the good effendi himself is.’ Isaac Pourtalès made a wry face aside to himself. Evidently he had settled in his own mind that whatever might be Delgado’s private opinion about the friends of the Lord’s friend, he himself was not going to be bound, when the moment for action actually arrived, by anybody else’s ideas of promises. By-and-by, Rosina rose to go. ‘You is comin’ wit me, Isaac?’ she asked coquettishly, with her finger stuck once more in coy reserve at the corner of her mouth, and her head a little on one side, bewitching negress fashion. Isaac hesitated; it does not do for a brown man to be too condescending and familiar with a nigger girl, even if she does happen to be his sweetheart. Besides, Delgado signed to him with his withered finger that he wanted him to stop a few minutes longer. ‘No, Missy Rosie,’ the mulatto answered, yawning quietly; ‘I doan’t gwine yet. You know de road to house, I tink. Ebenin’, le-ady.’ Rosina gave a sighing, sidelong look of disappointed affection, took her lover’s hand a little coldly in her own black fingers, and sidled out of the hut with much reluctance, half-frightened still at the horrid prospect of once more facing alone the irrepressible and ubiquitous ghouls. As soon as she was fairly out of earshot, Louis Delgado approached at once close to the mulatto’s ear and murmured in a mysterious hollow undertone: ‘Next Wednesday.’ The mulatto started. ‘So soon as dat!’ he cried. ‘Den you has got de pistols?’