here are two names upon our list before him."

"He escaped from our hands and burst into the room."

"Let him await his turn. Take him down to the wooden cell."

"If he resist us, your Excellency?"

"Bury your knives in his body. The tribunal will uphold you. Remove him
until we have dealt with the others."

They advanced upon me, and for an instant I thought of resistance.
It would have been a heroic death, but who was there to see it or to
chronicle it? I might be only postponing my fate, and yet I had been in
so many bad places and come out unhurt that I had learned always to hope
and to trust my star. I allowed these rascals to seize me, and I was led
from the room, the gondolier walking at my side with a long naked knife
in his hand. I could see in his brutal eyes the satisfaction which it
would give him if he could find some excuse for plunging it into my
body.

They are wonderful places, these great Venetian houses, palaces, and
fortresses, and prisons all in one. I was led along a passage and down
a bare stone stair until we came to a short corridor from which three
doors opened. Through one of these I was thrust and the spring lock
closed behind me. The only light came dimly through a small grating
which opened on the passage.

Peering and feeling, I carefully examined the chamber in which I had
been placed. I understood from what I had heard that I should soon have
to leave it again in order to appear before this tribunal, but still it
is not my nature to throw away any possible chances.

The stone floor of the cell was so damp and the walls for some feet high
were so slimy and foul that it was evident they were beneath the level
of the water. A single slanting hole high up near the ceiling was the
only aperture for light or air. Through it I saw one bright star shining
down upon me, and the sight filled me with comfort and with hope. I have
never been a man of religion, though I have always had a respect for
those who were, but I remember that night that the star shining down the
shaft seemed to be an all-seeing eye which was upon me, and I felt as a
young and frightened recruit might feel in battle when he saw the calm
gaze of his colonel turned upon him.

Three of the sides of my prison were formed of stone, but the fourth
was of wood, and I could see that it had only recently been erected.
Evidently a partition had been thrown up to divide a single large cell
into two smaller ones. There was no h