of the police Benito and Manoel were taken
away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already
lasted too long.

"Sir," said the doomed man, "before to-morrow, before the hour of my
execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask you
to tell?"

"It will be forbidden."

"May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife and children?"

"You shall see them."

"Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that window;
it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will."

And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with
the warder and the soldiers.

The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone.

CHAPTER XVIII. FRAGOSO

AND SO the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it was
an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence pronounced on
Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice must take its course.

It was the very day--the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning
of which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows.

The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of
negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man.

Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond
arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to
mercy.

Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor
that he was about to lose.

But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the
speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which
he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell,
incapable of carrying him any further.

The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked
and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of
exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of
the city.

The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left bank
of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse,
which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to
Manaos.

It was Fragoso!

Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had
spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? Had
he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta?

He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acqu