“At the darkest hour of the night we passed through the door, and crawled through the dreadful passages beneath the monastery.  I reached the top of the ladder-a lantern flashed in my eyes.  I dropped down into my brother’s arms.

“We hurried away to where a carriage was waiting.  I sprang into it.

“‘He is safe,’ cried Juan, following me.

“‘But are you?’ answered a voice behind him.  He staggered and fell back.  I leapt down beside him.  I was bathed in his blood.  He was dead.  One moment of wild, fearful agony, and I lost consciousness.

“When I came to myself, I was lying 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, 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.