"What are you saying there?" thundered one of the drivers in Arabic. "What you say to dat feller? you raskil! you white slabe! Come 'long home!" cried Peter the Great, seizing Foster by the collar and dragging him forcibly away, at the same time administering several kicks so violent that his entire frame seemed to be dislocated, while the janissaries burst into a laugh at the big negro's seeming fury. "Oh! Geo'ge, Geo'ge," continued Peter, as he dragged the middy along, shaking him from time to time, "you'll be de deaf ob me, an' ob yourself too, if you don't larn to _submit_. An' see, too, what a hyperkrite you make me! I's 'bliged to kick hard, or dey wouldn't b'lieve me in arnist." "Well, well, Peter," returned our hero, who at once understood his friend's ruse to disarm suspicion, and get him away safely, "you need not call yourself a hypocrite this time, at all events, for your kicks and shakings have been uncommonly real--much too real for comfort." "Didn't I say I was _'bleeged_ to do it?" retorted Peter, with a pout that might have emulated that of his wife on the occasion of their engagement. "D'you s'pose dem raskils don' know a real kick from a sham one? I was marciful too, for if I'd kicked as I _could_, dere wouldn't be a whole bone in your carcass at dis momint! You's got to larn to be grateful, Geo'ge. Come along." Conversing thus pleasantly, the white slave and the black left the Kasba together and descended into the town. CHAPTER SEVEN. THE MIDDY OBTAINS A DECIDED ADVANCE, AND MAKES PETER THE GREAT HIS CONFIDANT. Many months passed, after the events narrated in the last chapter, before George Foster had the good-fortune to meet again with Hugh Sommers, and several weeks elapsed before he had the chance of another interview with the daughter. Indeed, he was beginning to despair of ever again seeing either the one or the other, and it required the utmost energy and the most original suggestions of a hopeful nature on the part of his faithful friend to prevent his giving way altogether, and having, as Peter expressed it, "anoder fit ob de blues." At last fortune favoured him. He was busy in the garden one day planting flowers, when Peter came to him and said-- "I's got news for you to-day, Geo'ge." "Indeed," said the middy, with a weary sigh; "what may your news be?" "You 'member dat pictur' ob de coffee-house in de town what you doo'd?" "Yes, now you mention it, I do, though I had almost forgotten it." "Ah! but I not forgit 'im! Well, yesterday I tuk it to massa, an' he bery much pleased. He say, bring you up to de house, an' he gib you some work to do." "I wish," returned Foster, "that he'd ask me to make a portrait of little Hester Sommers." "You forgit, Geo'ge, de Moors neber git deir portraits doo'd. Dey 'fraid ob de evil eye." "Well, when are we to go up?" "Now--I jist come for you."