ndure the light from a torch which one of them carried,
but he saw that they made signs to him to rise and accompany them. He
knew that to disobey would be useless. Rising from the ground on which
he had been resting, he endeavoured by earnest prayer to nerve himself
for the fearful ordeal through which he might have to go.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE TORTURE.

Antonio Herezuelo was only one of many who on that unhappy night were
seized by the officers of the Inquisition and dragged off to prison. In
consequence of the information given by the wife of Juan Garcia, eighty
persons were immediately apprehended in Valladolid, among those who had
been present at the meetings; and in Seville and its neighbourhood two
hundred were betrayed into the hands of the inquisitors by the treachery
of a pretended member of the Protestant Church, and the superstitious
fears of another. The first, suspecting that some of his acquaintances
entertained Lutheran opinions, insinuated himself into their confidence
for the express purpose of learning their secrets and of betraying them.
The latter, hearing Lutheran principles denounced in the most fearful
language, as the only means of saving himself from the results of the
anathemas, hurried off and informed against all those he knew to be
Protestants. Dismay seized upon large numbers of the most timid of the
Protestants; and as people are often panic-struck when a ship strikes
the rocks, and leap overboard into the raging surf, so some of them
hurried off to the Triana, and accused themselves to the inquisitors of
entertaining doctrines for which the stake was the sure punishment.
Others, who had been before unsuspected, betrayed themselves by the
hurried manner of their flight. Thus in a few days the chief members of
all the Protestant Churches throughout Spain were either in prison, or
fugitives, or hiding in the caves of the earth, among mountains and
forests. In no place, however, were they safe, and many even of those
abroad were betrayed into the hands of the emissaries of the
Inquisition, and dragged back to Spain to suffer death at the stake.
The inquisitors were not content with those who denounced themselves.
Every possible means was employed to discover heretics, and to assist
the object Philip renewed a royal ordinance--fallen into desuetude--
allowing to informers the fourth part of the property of those guilty of
heresy. This abominable edict greatly increased the zeal a