standing beside an open door with a key in his hand. The old Moor gives
the key into Don Sanchez's hand, and with a very formal salutation,
leaves us.

Then following the Don through the doorway, we find ourselves in a
spacious garden, but quite wild for neglect; flower and weed and fruit
all mingling madly together, but very beautiful to my eye, nevertheless,
for the abundance of colour, the richness of the vegetables, and the
graceful forms of the adjacent palms.

A house stood in the midst of this wilderness, and thither Don Sanchez
picked his way, we at his heels still too amazed to speak. Beside the
house was a well with a little wall about it, and seating himself on
this, Don Sanchez opens his lips for the first time.

"My friend, Sidi ben Ahmed, has offered me the use of this place as long
as we choose to stay here," says he. "Go look in the house and tell me
if you care to live in it for a year."




CHAPTER XII.


_How Don Sanchez very honestly offers to free us of our bargain if we
will; but we will not._


The house, like nearly all Moorish houses of this class, was simply one