uibbles. If thou expirest under the torture
(let the secretary take note), thy death shall not be laid at the door
of the Holy Office, but of thine own obstinacy."

"Christ will avenge His martyrs," said Dom Diego, with so sublime a
mien that Gabriel doubted whether, after all, instinct had not misled
him.

The judge made an impatient sign, and the masked man tied the victim's
hands and feet together with a thick cord, and winding it around the
breast, placed the hunched, nude figure upon a stool, while he passed
the ends of the cord through two of the iron rings in the wall. Then,
kicking away the stool, he left the victim suspended in air by cords
that cut into his flesh.

"Confess!" said the judge.

But Dom Diego set his teeth. The executioner drew the cords tighter
and tighter, till the blood burst from under his victim's nails, and
ever and anon he let the sharp-staved iron ladder fall against his
naked shins.

"O Sancta Maria!" groaned the physician at length.

"These be but the beginning of thy tortures, an thou confessest not,"
said the judge, "Draw tighter."

"Nay," here interrupted the surgeon. "Another draw and he may expire."

Another tightening, and Gabriel da Costa would have fainted. Deadly
pale beneath his mask, he felt sick and trembling--the cords seemed to
be cutting into his own flesh. His heart was equally hot against the
torturers and the tortured, and he admired the physician's courage
even while he abhorred his cowardice. And while the surgeon was
busying himself to mend the victim for new tortures, Gabriel da Costa
had a shuddering perception of the tragedy of Israel--sublime and
sordid.

V

It was with equally mingled feelings, complicated by astonishment,
that he learned a week or so later that Dom Diego had been acquitted
of Judaism and set free. Impulse drove him to seek speech with the
sufferer. He crossed the river to the physician's house, but only by
extreme insistence did he procure access to the high vaulted room in
which the old man lay abed, surrounded by huge tomes on pillow and
counterpane, and overbrooded by an image of the Christ.

"Pardon that I have been reluctant to go back without a sight of
thee," said Gabriel. "My anxiety to see how thou farest after thy
mauling by the hell-hounds must be my excuse."

Dom Diego cast upon him a look of surprise and suspicion.

"The hounds may follow a wrong scent; but they are of heaven, not
hell," he said rebukingly. "If