ng in an apartment not unlike my cell,
but without a crucifix. Beside me stood my companion in flight.

"'Where am I?' I asked.

"'You are in the prison of the Inquisition,' he replied, with a mocking
laugh.

"He had betrayed me! He had been all the while in league with the
superior.

"I was tried again and again by the Inquisition--, charged not only with
the crime of escaping from the convent and breaking my religious vows,
but with the murder of my brother. My spirits sank with each appearance
before the judges. I foresaw myself doomed to die at the stake.

"One night, and for several nights afterwards, a visitor presented
himself to me. He came and went apparently without help or hindrance--as
if he had had a master-key to all the recesses of the prison. And yet he
seemed no agent of the Inquisition--indeed, he denounced it with caustic
satire and withering severity. But what struck me most of all was the
preternatural glare of his eyes. I felt that I had never beheld such
eyes blazing in a mortal face. It was strange, too, that he constantly
referred to events that must have happened long before his birth as if
he had actually witnessed them.

"On the night before my final trial, I awoke from a hideous dream of
burning alive to behold the stranger standing beside me. With an impulse
I could not resist, I flung myself before him and begged him to save me.
He promised to do so--on one awful and incommunicable condition. My
horror brought me courage; I refused, and he left me.

"Next day I was sentenced to death at the stake. But before my fearful
doom could be accomplished, I was free--and by that very agency of fire
that was to have destroyed me. The prison of the Inquisition was burned
to the ground, and in the confusion I escaped.

"When my strength was exhausted by running through the deserted streets,
I leaned against a door; it gave way, and I found myself within the
house. Concealed, I heard two voices--an old man's and a young man's.
The old man was confessing to the young one--his son--that he was a Jew,
and entreating the son to adopt the faith of Israel.

"I knew I was in the presence of a pretended convert--one of those Jews
who profess to become Catholics through fear of the Inquisition. I had
become possessed of a valuable secret, and instantly acted upon it. I
burst out upon them, and threatened that unless the old man gave me
hiding I should betray him. At first he was panic-stricken, then,