ill useful to my people, and a miracle is
necessary to save me, that miracle will be performed; if not, I shall
die! God alone is my judge!"

The excitement increased in Manaos as the time ran on; the affair was
discussed with unexampled acerbity. In the midst of this enthralment of
public opinion, which evoked so much of the mysterious, the document was
the principal object of conversation.

At the end of this fourth day not a single person doubted but that it
contained the vindication of the doomed man. Every one had been given
an opportunity of deciphering its incomprehensible contents, for the
"Diario d'o Grand Para" had reproduced it in facsimile. Autograph copies
were spread about in great numbers at the suggestion of Manoel, who
neglect nothing that might lead to the penetration of the mystery--not
even chance, that "nickname of Providence," as some one has called it.

In addition, a reward of one hundred contos (or three hundred thousand
francs) was promised to any one who could discover the cipher so
fruitlessly sought after--and read the document. This was quite a
fortune, and so people of all classes forgot to eat, drink, or sleep to
attack this unintelligible cryptogram.

Up to the present, however, all had been useless, and probably the most
ingenious analysts in the world would have spent their time in vain. It
had been advertised that any solution should be sent, without delay, to
Judge Jarriquez, to his house in God-the-Son Street; but the evening
of the 29th of August came and none had arrived, nor was any likely to
arrive.

Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was
one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also
joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair
at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man,
and exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his
search for the key. It was not only the art for art's sake which guided
him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under
an unjust condemnation. If it is the fact that a certain quantity of
phosphorus is expended in the work of the brain, it would be difficult
to say how many milligrammes the judge had parted with to excite
the network of his "sensorium," and after all, to find out nothing,
absolutely nothing.

But Jarriquez had no idea of abandoning the inquiry. If he could only
now trust to chance, he wo