The old judge showed signs of very naive astonishment and joy.

"Is it possible?" he exclaimed. "This man? He is very young to have
committed such crimes."

The clerk hurriedly left the room. He returned with many papers.
O'Brien, leaning over the judge's shoulder, emphasized words with one
finger. What new villainies could O'Brien be meditating? It wasn't
possibly the _Lugareno's_ suggestion that I had lured men to murder Don
Balthasar? Was it merely that I had infringed some law in carrying off
Seraphina?

The old judge said, "How lucky, Don Patricio! We may now satisfy the
English admiral. What good fortune!"

He suddenly sat straight in his chair; O'Brien behind him scrutinized my
face--to see how I should bear what was coming.

"What is your name?" the judge asked peremptorily.

I said, "Juan--John Kemp. I am of noble English family; I am well enough
known. Ask the Senor O'Brien."

On O'Brien's shaken face the smile hardened.

"I heard that in Rio Medio the senor was called... was called..." He
paused and appealed to the _Lugareno_.

"What was he called--the _capataz_ the man who led the picaroons?"

The _Lugareno_ stammered, "Nikola... Nikola el Escoces, Senor Don
Patricio."

"You hear?" O'Brien asked the judge. "This villager identifies the man."

"Undoubtedly--undoubtedly," the _Juez_ said. "We need no more
evidence.... You, Senor, have seen this villain in Rio Medio, this
villager identifies him by name."

I said, "This is absurd. A hundred witnesses can say that I am John
Kemp...."

"That may be true," the _Juez_ said dryly, and then to his clerk:

"Write here, 'John Kemp, of noble British family, called, on the scene
of his crimes, Nikola el Escoces, otherwise El Demonio.'"

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not, at the moment, realize to what this
all tended.

The judge said to the clerk, "Read the Act of Accusation. Read here...."
He was pointing to a paragraph of the papers the clerk had brought in.
They were the Act of Accusation, prepared long before, against the man
Nichols.

This particular villainy suddenly became grotesquely and portentously
plain. The clerk read an appalling catalogue of sordid crimes, working
into each other like kneaded dough--the testimony of witnesses who had
signed the record. Nikola had looted fourteen ships, and had apparently
murdered twenty-two people with his own hand--two of them women--and
there was the affair of Rowley's boats. "The pinnace," the