with
you."

"Sir," said I, "other answer I cannot give you, for I have already told
you the truth. As for my sins against God I heartily ask His
forgiveness, and also yours if I have offended your laws in any way; but
I beseech you to remember that I came into your country against my own
will, and have never done aught against its laws or against you
wittingly. Therefore, I beseech you to have Christian mercy upon my
defenseless condition."

But they had none, and that night I was put upon the rack, and cruelly
tortured by Frey Bartolomeo and his fellows, in the hope that I should
confess something against myself. However, God giving me strength, I
said naught, and was preserved through that awful torment, the memory of
which is strong in my mind even after all these years.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE AUTO-DA-FE.

About the beginning of Holy Week the Inquisitors caused to be erected a
great scaffold against the large church in the main square, and from it
they proclaimed, with much beating of drums and blaring of trumpets,
that whoever should come there upon Good Friday should have made known
to them the most just judgments of the Holy Inquisition upon the English
heretics, Lutherans, and should, moreover, see the same put into
immediate execution. And so now we were face to face with whatever final
cruelty these devils in human shape might devise upon us, who were
helpless and defenseless in their hands.

There was little rest for any of us on the night preceding the
judgments, for there came to each of us officers and Familiars of the
Inquisition, tormenting us with gibes and sneers, and bringing us the
San-benitos in which we were to appear in the great square next morning.
It was already turning gray in the east when two of these men entered my
dungeon, where I lay still stiff and bruised because of the racking
which I had undergone a few days before. They woke me rudely and without
consideration, caring naught for the woes I had already suffered or the
sorrow I was that day to undergo.

"Wake, English dog, Lutheran, enemy of God!" cried one. "Wake and robe
thyself to meet thy master the devil. Truly the saints will rejoice to
see the sight provided for them this day."

Then they hustled me from my straw pallet and bade me dress in the
San-benito, which was a garment of yellow cotton having divers devices
painted upon it. And this done they took me out into the courtyard of
the prison, and there for the