before him. The document which Joam Dacosta appealed to was not
produced; he did not really know if it actually existed; and to
conclude, he had before him a man whose guilt had for him the certainty
of a settled thing.

However, he wished, perhaps through curiosity, to drive Joam Dacosta
behind his last entrenchments.

"And so," he said, "all your hope now rests on the declaration which has
been made to you by Torres."

"Yes, sir, if my whole life does not plead for me."

"Where do you think Torres really is?"

"I think in Manaos."

"And you hope that he will speak--that he will consent to good-naturedly
hand over to you the document for which you have declined to pay the
price he asked?"

"I hope so, sir," replied Joam Dacosta; "the situation now is not the
same for Torres; he has denounced me, and consequently he cannot retain
any hope of resuming his bargaining under the previous conditions.
But this document might still be worth a fortune if, supposing I am
acquitted or executed, it should ever escape him. Hence his interest is
to sell me the document, which can thus not injure him in any way, and I
think he will act according to his interest."

The reasoning of Joam Dacosta was unanswerable, and Judge Jarriquez felt
it to be so. He made the only possible objection.

"The interest of Torres is doubtless to sell you the document--if the
document exists."

"If it does not exist," answered Joam Dacosta, in a penetrating voice,
"in trusting to the justice of men, I must put my trust only in God!"

At these words Judge Jarriquez rose, and, in not quite such an
indifferent tone, said, "Joam Dacosta, in examining you here, in
allowing you to relate the particulars of your past life and to protest
your innocence, I have gone further than my instructions allow me. An
information has already been laid in this affair, and you have appeared
before the jury at Villa Rica, whose verdict was given unanimously, and
without even the addition of extenuating circumstances. You have been
found guilty of the instigation of, and complicity in, the murder of the
soldiers and the robbery of the diamonds at Tijuco, the capital sentence
was pronounced on you, and it was only by flight that you escaped
execution. But that you came here to deliver yourself over, or not, to
the hands of justice twenty-three years afterward, you would never have
been retaken. For the last time, you admit that you are Joam Dacosta,
the condemned ma