And I, seeing the signature Elizabeth Godwin, answers quickly enough:
"Aye, 'tis my dear cousin Bess, her own hand."

"This," says the Don, handing the other to Evans, "you may understand."

"I can make out 'tis writ in the Moorish style," says Evans, "but the
meaning of it I know not, for I can't tell great A from a bull's foot
though it be in printed English."

"'Tis an undertaking on the part of Bare ben Moula," says the Don, "to
deliver up at Dellys in Barbary the persons of Mrs. Godwin and her
daughter against the payment of five thousand gold ducats within one
year. The other writing tells its own story."

Mr. Hopkins took the first sheet from me and read it aloud. It was
addressed to Mr. Richard Godwin, Hurst Court, Chislehurst in Kent, and
after giving such particulars of her past as we had already heard from
Don Sanchez, she writes thus: "And now, my dear nephew, as I doubt not
you (as the nearest of my kindred to my dear husband after us two poor
relicts) have taken possession of his estate in the belief we were all
lost in our voyage from Italy, I do pray you for the love of God and of
mercy to deliver us from our bondage by sending hither a ship with the
money for our ransoms forthwith, and be assured by this that I shall not
dispossess you of your fortune (more than my bitter circumstances do now
require), so that I but come home to die in a Christian country and have
my sweet Judith where she may be less exposed to harm than in this
infidel country. I count upon your love,--being ever a dear nephew,--and
am your most hopeful, trusting, and loving aunt, Elizabeth Godwin."

"Very well, sir," says Mr. Hopkins, returning the letter. "You have been