"Is the child a slave?"
"No."
"Then wherefore is it here?" asked Hull.
"His is truly a pathetic story as I have heard it. It seems he was a widower with his child wandering about the country, when he fell in with some of the Duke of Monmouth's people and enlisted. He was captured at Sedgemore, and condemned by Jeffries. The child was left to wander at will; but by some means she accompanied her father, managed to smuggle herself on shipboard, and was not discovered until the vessel was well out to sea. Then the captain, who was a humane man, permitted them to remain together to the end of the voyage. She is with her father now, and a prettier little maid I never saw."
"By the mass! I will go and see her," cried Hull. "If she be all you say, I will buy them both."
"But she is not for sale."
"Wherefore not?"
"She was not adjudged by the court."
With the cold, heartless laugh of a natural tyrant, Hull answered:
"It will be all the same. He who purchases the father will have the maid also."