"Son, thou hast said enough," replied the Dominican, closing his eyes,
and muttering a short thanksgiving. "Now then to my task."

"Yet stay," said the king, with an altered visage; "follow me to my
oratory within: my heart is heavy, and I would fain seek the solace of
the confessional."

The monk obeyed: and while Ferdinand, whose wonderful abilities were
mingled with the weakest superstition, who persecuted from policy, yet
believed, in his own heart, that he punished but from piety,--confessed
with penitent tears the grave offences of aves forgotten, and
beads untold; and while the Dominican admonished, rebuked, or
soothed,--neither prince nor monk ever dreamt that there was an error to
confess in, or a penance to be adjudged to, the cruelty that tortured a
fellow-being, or the avarice that sought pretences for the extortion of
a whole people.

CHAPTER VII. THE TRIBUNAL AND THE MIRACLE

It was the dead of night--the army was hushed in sleep--when four
soldiers belonging to the Holy Brotherhood, bearing with them one whose
manacles proclaimed him a prisoner, passed in steady silence to a huge
tent in the neighbourhood of the royal pavilion. A deep dyke, formidable
barricadoes, and sentries stationed at frequent intervals, testified the
estimation in which the safety of this segment of the camp was held. The
tent to which the soldiers approached was, in extent, larger than even
the king's pavilion itself--a mansion of canvas, surrounded by a wide
wall of massive stones; and from its summit gloomed, in the clear and
shining starlight, a small black pennant, on which was wrought a white
broad-pointed cross. The soldiers halted at the gate in the wall,
resigned their charge, with a whispered watchword, to two gaunt
sentries; and then (relieving the sentries who proceeded on with the
prisoner) remained, mute and motionless, at the post: for stern silence
and Spartan discipline were the attributes of the brotherhood of St.
Hermandad.

The prisoner, as he now neared the tent, halted a moment, looked round
steadily, as if to fix the spot in his remembrance, and then, with an
impatient though stately gesture, followed his guards. He passed two
divisions of the tent, dimly lighted, and apparently deserted. A
man, clad in long black robes, with a white cross on his breast, now
appeared; there was an interchange of signals in dumb-show-and in
another moment Almamen, the Hebrew, stood within a large chamber (if so