om
it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,--the
same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed
to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted
my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.

Open it,--he said,--and light the lamp.--The young girl walked to the
cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black
velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver
lamp hung over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the bedside.
The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.--Give
me your hand, he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So
they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they
still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the
young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some
deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an
involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying
grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture.
She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held
her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers
would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the
Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place.
Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying
figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and
lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer uncomplaining.
In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget the duties of
her under office, but dried the dying man's moist forehead with her
handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were glistening on her own.
How long this lasted she never could tell. Time and thirst are two
things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous
judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than
you or I!--What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness
de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.--For you to
drink,--said the torturer to the little woman.--She could not think that
it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her
alive for her confession. The torturer knew better than she.

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures,
--without any warning,--t