wishing to be more intimately acquainted with him."

"I know very little of him myself. Even his name is unknown to me, and
I saw him to-day for the first time in my life."

"How? And was he in so short a time, and by using only a few words,
able to convince you both of our innonocence and his own?"

"Undoubtedly, with a single word."

"And this was? I confess I wish to know it."

"This stranger, my prince," said the officer, weighing the zechins in
his band,--"you have been too generous for me to make a secret of it any
longer,--this stranger is an officer of the Inquisition."

"Of the Inquisition? This man?"

"He is, indeed, gracious prince. I was convinced of it by the paper
which he showed to me."

"This man, did you say? That cannot be."

"I will tell your highness more. It was upon his information that I
have been sent here to arrest the sorcerer."

We looked at each other in the utmost astonishment.

"Now we know," said the English lord at length, "why the poor devil of a
sorcerer started in such a terror when he looked more closely into his