trance, the gloom of the interior is almost impenetrable to the
eye. The men had brought torches to assist them in their work, and, a
suitable spot having been selected, these were stuck on different points
and abutments of the rocky wall, when the party proceeded to unload the
mules at the entrance, conveying their burdens into the cave.

In the midst of the bustle and noise attending the operation, the little
dog given by Esther to Carlota, which had that morning followed the
Major, to whom it had speedily attached itself, began barking and
howling dismally in a dark recess behind one of the great natural
pillars before spoken of. As the noise continued, intermixed with
piteous whinings, one of the men took a torch from the wall, and stepped
forward into the darkness, to see what ailed the animal. Presently he
cried out that "there was a man there."

My grandfather, who was next him, immediately followed, and five paces
brought him to the spot. The soldier who held the torch was stooping,
and holding it over a figure that lay on the ground on its back. In the
unshaven, blood-stained countenance, my grandfather, at first, had some
difficulty in recognising Lazaro the Jew. Some fiery splashes of pitch
from the torch dropping at the moment on his bare throat, produced no
movement, though, had he been living, they must have scorched him to the
quick.

On the body was nothing but the shirt he wore the night of his flight
from the hospital, but his legs were wrapt in a woman's dress. Across
his breast, on her face, lay Esther, in her white undergarments--for the
gown that wrapt the Jew's legs was hers. The glare of the torch was
bright and red on the two prostrate figures, and on the staring appalled
countenance of the man who held it--the group forming a glowing spot in
the vast, sombre, vaulted space, where dim gleams of light were caught
and repeated on projecting masses of rock, more and more faintly, till
all was bounded by darkness.

Years afterwards my grandfather would sometimes complain of having been
revisited, in dreams of the night, by that ghastly piece of Rembrandt
painting.

The rest quickly flocked to the spot, and Esther was lifted and found to
breathe, though the Jew was stiff and cold. Some diluted spirit, from
the cellar of Bags, being poured down her throat, she revived a little,
when my grandfather caused two of the men to bear her carefully to his
house; and the body of the Jew, being wrapt in a