hastily promising me protection, he conducted me within the house. In an
inner room he raised a portion of the floor; we descended and went along
a dark passage, at the end of which my guide opened a door, through
which I passed. He closed it behind me, and withdrew.

"I was in an underground chamber, the walls of which were lined with
skeletons, bottles containing strange misshapen creatures, and other
hideous objects. I shuddered as I looked round.

"'Why fearest thou these?' asked a voice.' Surely the implements of the
healing art should cause no terror.'

"I turned and beheld a man immensely old seated at a table. His eyes,
although faded with years, looked keenly at me.

"'Thou hast escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition?' he asked me.

"'Yes,' I answered.

"'And when in its prison,' he continued, leaning forward eagerly, 'didst
thou face a tempter who offered thee deliverance at a dreadful price?'

"'It was so,' I answered, wondering.

"'My prayer, then, is granted,' he said. 'Christian youth, thou art safe
here. None save mine own Jewish people know of my existence. And I have
employment for thee.'

"He showed me a huge manuscript.

"'This,' he said, 'is written in characters that the officers of the
Inquisition understand not. But the time has come for transcribing it,
and my own eyes, old with age, are unequal to the labour. Yet it was
necessary that the work should be done by one who has learnt the dread
secret.'

"A glance at the manuscript showed me that the language was Spanish, but
the characters Greek. I began to read it, nor did I raise my eyes until
the reading was ended."

_III.--The Romance of Immalee_

"The manuscript told how a Spanish merchant had set forth for the East
Indies, taking his wife and son with him, and leaving an infant daughter
behind. He prospered, and decided to settle in the East; he sent for his
daughter, who came with her nurse. But their ship was wrecked; the child
and the nurse alone escaped, and were stranded on an uninhabited island
near the mouth of the Hooghly. The nurse died; but the child survived,
and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, dwelling in lonely
innocence, and revered as a goddess by the natives who watched her from
afar.

"To the Island, when Immalee (so she called herself) was growing into
pure and lovely womanhood, there came a stranger--pale-faced, wholly
different from the dark-skinned people she had seen from the s