CHAPTER XVI.
These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence, Therefore, I pray you, stay not to discourse, But mount you presently.
-- Shakspeare.
An hour had slid by, in hasty and nearly incoherent questions and answers, before Middleton, hanging over his recovered treasure with that sort of jealous watchfulness with which a miser would regard his hoards, closed the disjointed narrative of his own proceedings by demanding-- "And you, my Inez; in what manner were you treated ?" "In every thing, but the great injustice they did in separating me so forcibly from my friends, as well perhaps as the circumstances of my captors would allow.

I think the man, who is certainly the master here, is but a new beginner in wickedness.

He quarrelled frightfully in my presence, with the wretch who seized me, and then they made an impious bargain, to which I was compelled to acquiesce, and to which they bound me as well as themselves by oaths.

Ah! Middleton, I fear the heretics are not so heedful of their vows as we who are nurtured in the bosom of the true church!" "Believe it not; these villains are of no religion: did they forswear themselves ?" "No, not perjured: but was it not awful to call upon the good God to witness so sinful a compact ?" "And so we think, Inez, as truly as the most virtuous cardinal of Rome.
But how did they observe their oath, and what was its purport ?" "They conditioned to leave me unmolested, and free from their odious presence, provided I would give a pledge to make no effort to escape; and that I would not even show myself, until a time that my masters saw fit to name." "And that time ?" demanded the impatient Middleton, who so well knew the religious scruples of his wife--"that time ?" "It is already passed.

I was sworn by my patron saint, and faithfully did I keep the vow, until the man they call Ishmael forgot the terms by offering violence.