Perceiving that she mistook him for some officer of justice, the King told her in a tone of convincing gentleness, that he was a friend, not an enemy; one that had shared captivity with Gaspar, and sought only the satisfaction of beholding him again. At this assurance the girl hastened down, and opening the door, admitted Sebastian into a low, earth-floored room, in which he saw a younger girl, half clothed, pale, and trembling: their resemblance to Gaspar, and the desolateness of their situation, struck him so forcibly, that uttering an expression of concern, in which the name of his friend was more than once repeated, he sat down to recover himself. The two young women looked at him fearfully: his habit, indeed, was mean and shattered, but the nobleness of his countenance, the grandeur of his mien, awakened a suspicion of his real character. “My brother spoke but of one companion in slavery,” said Marakita, the eldest, hesitating as she proceeded, “and to him he gave a pledge at parting, a ring which--” Without speaking, Sebastian held out his hand, and Marakita recognizing on it a coarse bauble that had once been her own, hastened to prostrate herself at the feet of her sovereign: struggling in vain to repress his extreme emotion, Sebastian raised her and her sister, desiring them to tell him the fate of their brother. Marakita took out a letter from an old leather case which she had hidden under a stone of the door-way, and gave it the King; opening it, he read eagerly as follows. “Most honoured sovereign, and may I venture to say, dear as honoured! should these ill-written lines ever come into your hands, (and God alone knows how to bring that blessed event to pass) I hope they may be given you on your throne; then you will not forget, sire, the poor orphans who present it, nor blush to acknowledge their self-exiled brother: but if, as I fear, it should be given to you after your unassisted return, O! let it warn you to trust no man in Portugal. Interest and ambition have corrupted every heart. “They who should have loved their King most, have injured him most. I have personally applied to Donna Gonsalva, to Don Antonio, to the Dukes of Braganza and D’Aveyro, nay, to the Cardinal Regent himself, and all have pretended to disbelieve me. I have been imprisoned for my zeal, but thanks to an honest fellow-soldier have escaped, and am at this moment writing in a vessel bound for the land of Brazil: a man who is leaving her, and will journey towards the interior, has promised to convey this packet to my sisters. May the saints guide him on his way! “I go, sire, to make a last effort for justice. Don Emanuel de Castro, the most upright of your majesty’s subjects, having been ransomed out of Barbary, is at present the Viceroy at St. Salvador; his great soul never yet knew any other ambition than that of being unsurpassed in virtue: he will hear and credit my story, and assuredly will interest the powers of Europe in his master’s cause.