"By the lane opposite," stammered the Jew breathlessly. "Turn to the left--mount the crooked street--you will find yourself opposite to the garden, behind my old friend Zachariah's house. On passing through it, you are at the upper end of the Jews' street, and near the castle plain." "There is no time to be lost!" cried the spy, flinging his hat upon his head. "My pistols are primed and loaded," he continued, feeling in an inner pocket of his coat. "I shall be there before him. He must die. The same passage will favour my escape. Ah! it is you rascal of a Jew, villainous miser, who are the cause of all! Dearly shall you repay me this!" And seizing the old money-lender by the throat, he nearly throttled him, and, when he was almost black in the face, flung him with violence into a corner of the room. As the Italian disappeared, the old man raised himself, with difficulty, from the ground. "And such is the poor Jew's reward," he muttered, "from these Christian dogs, for all his losses, and his sacrifices, and his perils! What is to be done? If he kill the youth, I have still to fear his wrath. If he come not in time, we are undone. Every way is danger. Shall I myself turn informer? It is late--very late in the day--but yet it may be tried. Can I glean nothing from this paper that may sound like fresh and genuine information? What have we here?" he continued, rapidly scanning parts of Otmar's letter with his eye, and murmuring its contents to himself. "'I leave the country'--'But my father's honour must be covered'--'Send the papers ceding the estates'--'I am resolved to sign, although it be my utter ruin'--The name?--'Otmar, Baron Bartori.'--Merciful Jehovah!" burst forth the Jew. "It is he! It is my young man--and I knew it not--he, whose sign-manual is to convey to me the estates, in return for my poor moneys lent: and, if he sign not, the heritage goes to the next male heir; and I am frustrated of my dues. But he will be killed--die without signing. I am a ruined man--a ruined man!" And the money-lender clasped his hands in despair. "No, no--he must not die. Caracalli! Caracalli! touch him not! touch him not! He must not die, ere I have his precious sign-manual. Save him! save him! Jehovah! what shall I do? Caracalli! Caracalli!" And thus madly shouting after the Italian, the Jew rushed from his room in a frenzy of despair.