In her new home the fugitive's circumstances were much improved. Dinah and her husband had great influence over their owner, Youssef, the proprietor of the small coffee-house already described. They not only managed most of its details for him, but were permitted a good deal of personal liberty. Among other things they had been allowed to select the top of the house as their abode. To European ears this may sound rather strange, but those who have seen the flat roofs of Eastern lands will understand it. Youssef's house, like nearly all the other houses of the city, had a flat roof, with a surrounding parapet nearly breast-high. Here had been placed a few wooden boxes filled with earth and planted with flowering shrubs. These formed quite a little garden, to which Youssef had been wont to retreat of an evening for meditative and, we may add, smokative purposes. But as Youssef had grown old, his eyes had nearly, and his legs had quite, failed him. Hence, being unable to climb to his roof, he had latterly given it up entirely to the use of his black slaves, Samson and Dinah White. There was a small excrescence or hut on the roof--about ten feet by six in dimensions--which formed--their residence. Behind this, hiding itself as it were and almost invisible, nestled a smaller excrescence or offshoot. It was a mere bandbox of a thing, measuring five feet by four; it had a window about twelve inches square, and was entered by a door inside the larger hut. This was the apartment now assigned to Hester, who was quietly introduced into the household without the knowledge or consent of its blind proprietor. There was a little bed in the small room. True, it was only a trestle frame, and a straw-stuffed mattress with a couple of blankets, but it was clean, and the whole room was neat, and the sun shone brightly in at the small window at the moment that the new occupant was introduced. Poor Hester fell on her knees, laid her head on the bed, and thanked God fervently for the blessed change. Almost in the same moment she forgot herself, and prayed still more fervently for the deliverance of her father. The view over the housetops from the little window was absolutely magnificent, including as it did domes, minarets, mosques, palm-trees, shipping, and sea! Here, for a considerable time, Hester worked at her former occupation, for Dinah had a private plan to make a little money for her own pocket by means of embroidery. In this pleasant retreat our fugitive was visited one day by Peter the Great, the expression of whose visage betokened business. After some conversation, he said that he had come for the express purpose of taking Hester to see her father. "But not to talk to him," he added quickly--"not eben to make you'self known to him, for if you did, not'ing would keep 'im quiet, an' you an' he would be parted _for eber_. Mind dat--for _eber_!"