"I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you, Stanislas. I am
getting better, but I am so weak that I took five hours, yesterday,
to get six miles. Now I have got you to talk to, I shall pick up
strength faster than I have been doing, for it has been very dull
work having no one who could understand me. There is only one man
here who understands a word of Swedish."

"We will soon get you round, sir, never fear. I have brought with
me four casks of wine. They were left at the place where the cart
stopped last night, but the captain has sent off men already to
bring them in. You will be all the better for a suit of clean
clothes."

"That I shall. It is a month now since I had a change, and my
jerkin is all stained with blood. I want a wash more than anything;
for there was no water near the hut, and the charcoal burner used
to bring in a small keg from a spring he passed on his way to his
work. That was enough for drinking, but not enough for washing--a
matter which never seemed to have entered into his head, or that of
the Jew, as being in the slightest degree necessary."

"There is a well just outside," Stanislas said. "I saw them drawing
water in buckets as we came in. I suppose it was the well of this
castle, in the old time."

"I will go and have a wash, and change my clothes the first thing,"
Charlie said. "Mr. Ramsay's letter will keep till after that."

They went out to the well together.

"So you heard the story, that I had killed Ben Soloman, before you
left?"

"Yes; before your letter arrived, Mr. Ramsay sent for me, and told
me a Jewish trader had just informed him that news had come that
Ben Soloman had been murdered, and the deed had been done by the
young Scotchman who had been with him. Mr. Ramsay did not believe
the story in the slightest. He admitted that Ben Soloman might have
been murdered, and even said frankly that, hated as he was, it was
the most natural end for him to come to; but that you should have
done so was, he said, absurd. In the first place, he did not think
that you were alive; and in the second, it was far more probable
that you had been murdered by Ben Soloman, than that he should have
been murdered by you.

"However, even before your letter came, three or four hours later,
there seemed no longer any doubt that you had killed the Jew. By
that time, there was quite an uproar among his people. He was the
leader of their community, and had dealings with so many nobles
that