I looked at Mustapha in puzzlement. What did he mean by "jewel"? Had he gotten the treasure?
He turned to the mysterious girl, whose gold hair flashed in the lamplight as if ten thousand diamonds were netted in it. I had seen a girl's hair flashing in just such a way before! But where?
He saw me twirling my hat and grasped the situation:
"David," he explained, "this is my daughter! General Eaton told me that it was you who first pointed her out to him in the Arab camp."
Heigho! I had gone forth to seek adventures, and here at my home door was a more marvelous thing than any I had come upon. The girl that General Eaton had bought from the Bedouin hag was no other than the daughter the rector had lost in the desert! She was taller and lovelier, and the more I looked the more flustrated I became. I had always been shy before girls, and now I stood like a gawk, blushing under her gaze. I wanted the floor to open when she came forward and held up her lips in a matter-of-fact way for my kiss.
However, I did not dodge the invitation, for all my bashfulness. Indeed, I might as well record here that that sisterly kiss became a few months later the kiss of a sweetheart—but since I have no notion of having this book end in a love story, we had better get back to our course.
Mustapha, who had kept himself well in the rear, was now discovered by Anne, and what a jabbering in Arabic took place. Whenever after that I started to tell Anne of my adventures I found that she had already heard it from Mustapha. I can't say that I was displeased at this, because the lad—not that I deserved it—held me in high esteem, and painted me in every episode as a great hero.
Over the supper table we learned how the rector and Anne had been united. General Eaton had landed in Baltimore, and the rector, beholding beside the General a girl who bore a striking resemblance to his wife, stopped the officer in the street, questioned him, brought him and his ward to the parsonage as his guests, and there, by matching his story with that of Anne's, discovered that she was no other than his own daughter. Her mother—Anne had only a slight remembrance of her—must have died early in her captivity.
The next morning Mustapha and myself induced the rector to take a stroll with us. We reached the dock where The Morning Star was moored just as she was being unloaded. As we started to go aboard we bumped into a string of stevedores. Our search ended there and then, for among the baggage these men carried were our sacks.
"Toss those confounded bags aside," cried the officer in charge of the unloading. "I wonder if the cheeky rascal who sent them aboard thought I was going to hunt over Baltimore for 'Rev. Ezekiel Eccleston of Marley Chapel.'"