motionless. His arms rested on a small table and supported his head. Of
what was he thinking? Had he at last been convinced that human justice,
after failing the first time, would at length pronounce his acquittal?

Yes, he still hoped. With the report of Judge Jarriquez establishing
his identity, he knew that his memoir, which he had penned with so much
sincerity, would have been sent to Rio de Janeiro, and was now in the
hands of the chief justice. This memoir, as we know, was the history of
his life from his entry into the offices of the diamond arrayal until
the very moment when the jangada stopped before Manaos. Joam Dacosta was
pondering over his whole career. He again lived his past life from the
moment when, as an orphan, he had set foot in Tijuco. There his zeal had
raised him high in the offices of the governor-general, into which he
had been admitted when still very young. The future smiled on him; he
would have filled some important position. Then this sudden catastrophe;
the robbery of the diamond convoy, the massacre of the escort, the
suspicion directed against him as the only official who could have
divulged the secret of the expedition, his arrest, his appearance before
the jury, his conviction in spite of all the efforts of his advocate,
the last hours spent in the condemned cell at Villa Rica, his escape
under conditions which betokened almost superhuman courage, his flight
through the northern provinces, his arrival on the Peruvian frontier,
and the reception which the starving fugitive had met with from the
hospitable fazender Magalhaes.

The prisoner once more passed in review these events, which had
so cruelly marred his life. And then, lost in his thoughts and
recollections, he sat, regardless of a peculiar noise on the outer wall
of the convent, of the jerkings of a rope hitched on to a bar of his
window, and of grating steel as it cut through iron, which ought at once
to have attracted the attention of a less absorbed man.

Joam Dacosta continued to live the years of his youth after his arrival
in Peru. He again saw the fazender, the clerk, the partner of the old
Portuguese, toiling hard for the prosperity of the establishment at
Iquitos. Ah! why at the outset had he not told all to his benefactor? He
would never have doubted him. It was the only error with which he could
reproach himself. Why had he not confessed to him whence he had come,
and who he was--above all, at the moment when Magalha