hting the candle at the embers of the fire round which
Bags and his friends reposed. Then the Jew, who seemed to imagine
himself still in the hospital, bid her say whom, among those she knew in
Gibraltar, she would wish to have charge of her when he was no more;
and, on her mentioning Carlota, had desired her to take pen and paper
and write his will as he should dictate it. Pen she had none, but she
had a pencil and a scrap of paper in her pocket, and with these she
wrote, leaning over to catch the whispered syllables that he with
difficulty articulated.

From this paper it would appear that the Jew had some fatherly feelings
for Esther concealed beneath his harsh deportment towards her. I can
describe the will, for I have often seen it. It is written on a piece of
crumpled writing-paper, about the size of a bank-note, very stained and
dirty. It is written in Spanish; and in it the Jew entreats "the Senora,
the wife of Sr. Don Flinder, English officer, to take charge of his
orphan child, in requital whereof he leaves her the half of whatsoever
property he dies possessed of, the other half to be disposed of for the
benefit of his daughter." Then follows a second paragraph, inserted at
Esther's own desire, to the effect that, should she not survive, the
whole was to be inherited by the aforesaid Senora. It is dated "Abril
1781," and signed in a faint, straggling hand, quite different from the
clear writing of the rest--"JOSE LAZARO."

Esther would now have gone, at all hazards, to obtain assistance, but
the Jew clutched her arm, and would not permit her to quit him. He
breathed his last shortly after, and Esther remembered nothing more till
she came to herself in the Major's house. The paper was found in her
bosom.

Some days after this event, my grandfather went with Owen into the town,
during a temporary lull in the enemy's firing, to visit the house of
Lazaro, in order to ascertain whether anything valuable was left that
might be converted to Esther's benefit. They had some difficulty in
finding the exact locality, owing to the utter destruction of all the
landmarks. The place was a mass of ruins. Some provisions and goods had
been left by the plunderers, but so mixed with rubbish, and overflowed
with the contents of the casks of liquor and molasses, as to be of no
value even in these times of dearth.

Owen, poking about among the wreck, observed an open space in the middle
of one of the shattered walls, as if some