s, I
alone, who sign this with my true name, Ortega."

The reading of this had hardly finished when the air was rent with
prolonged hurrahs.

What could be more conclusive than this last paragraph, which summarized
the whole of the document, and proclaimed so absolutely the innocence of
the fazender of Iquitos, and which snatched from the gallows this victim
of a frightful judicial mistake!

Joam Dacosta, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends,
was unable to shake the hands which were held out to him. Such was the
strength of his character that a reaction occurred, tears of joy escaped
from his eyes, and at the same instant his heart was lifted up to that
Providence which had come to save him so miraculously at the moment he
was about to offer the last expiation to that God who would not permit
the accomplishment of that greatest of crimes, the death of an innocent
man!

Yes! There could be no doubt as to the vindication of Joam Dacosta. The
true author of the crime of Tijuco confessed of his own free will, and
described the circumstances under which it had been perpetrated!

By means of the number Judge Jarriquez interpreted the whole of the
cryptogram.

And this was what Ortega confessed.

He had been the colleague of Joam Dacosta, employed, like him, at
Tijuco, in the offices of the governor of the diamond arrayal. He had
been the official appointed to accompany the convoy to Rio de Janeiro,
and, far from recoiling at the horrible idea of enriching himself by
means of murder and robbery, he had informed the smugglers of the very
day the convoy was to leave Tijuco.

During the attack of the scoundrels, who awaited the convoy just beyond
Villa Rica, he pretended to defend himself with the soldiers of the
escort, and then, falling among the dead, he was carried away by his
accomplices. Hence it was that the solitary soldier who survived the
massacre had reported that Ortega had perished in the struggle.

But the robbery did not profit the guilty man in the long run, for,
a little time afterward, he was robbed by those whom he had helped to
commit the crime.

Penniless, and unable to enter Tijuco again, Ortega fled away to the
provinces in the north of Brazil, to those districts of the Upper Amazon
where the _capitaes da mato_ are to be found. He had to live somehow,
and so he joined this not very honorable company; they neither asked
him who he was nor whence he came, and so Ortega became a c