that in a hermitage on Monte Orsaro he did claim for an image of St.
Sebastian that it was miraculous, that it had power to heal suffering
and that miraculously it bled from its wounds each year during Passion
Week, whence it resulted that pilgrimages were made to this false shrine
and great store of alms was collected by the said Agostino d'Anguissola,
which moneys he appropriated to his own purposes. It is further known
that ultimately he fled the place, fearing discovery, and that after his
flight the image was discovered broken and the cunning engine by which
this diabolical sacrilege was perpetrated was revealed."

Throughout the reading, the fleshy eyes of the inquisitor had been
steadily, inscrutably regarding me. He passed a hand over his pendulous
chin, as the thin voice faded into silence.

"You have heard," said he.

"I have heard a tangle of falsehood," answered I. "Never was truth more
untruly told than this."

The beady eyes vanished behind narrowing creases of fat; and yet I knew
that they were still regarding me. Presently they appeared again.

"Do you deny that the image contained this hideous engine of fraud?"

"I do not," I answered.

"Set it down," he eagerly bade one of the amanuenses. "He confesses thus
much." And then to me--"Do you deny that you occupied that hermitage
during the season named?"

"I do not."

"Set it down," he said again. "What, then, remains?" he asked me.

"It remains that I knew nothing of the fraud. The trickster was a
pretended monk who dwelt there before me and at whose death I was
present. I took his place thereafter, implicitly believing in the
miraculous image, refusing, when its fraud was ultimately suggested to
me, to credit that any man could have dared so vile and sacrilegious
a thing. In the end, when it was broken and its fraud discovered, I
quitted that ghastly shrine of Satan's in horror and disgust."

There was no emotion on the huge, yellow face. "That is the obvious
defence," he said slowly. "But it does not explain the appropriation of
the moneys."

"I appropriated none," I cried angrily. That is the foulest lie of all."

"Do you deny that alms were made?"

"Certainly they were made; though to what extent I am unaware. A
vessel of baked earth stood at the door to receive the offerings of the
faithful. It had been my predecessor's practice to distribute a part
of these alms among the poor; a part, it was said, he kept to build a
bridge over the