And thinking such thoughts in the dead language that befitted one cut off from life, to whom Dutch was never aught but the unintelligible jargon of an unspiritual race, he was leaving his house on a bleak evening when one clapped him on the shoulder, and turning in amaze, he was still more mazed to find, for the first time in fifteen years, a fellow-creature tendering a friendly smile and a friendly hand. He drew back instinctively, without even recognizing the aged, white-bearded, yet burly figure. "What, Senhor Da Costa! thou hast forgotten thy victim?" With a strange thrill he felt the endless years in Amsterdam slip off him like the coils of some icy serpent, as he recognized the genial voice of the Porto physician, and though he was back again in the dungeon of the Holy Office, it was not the gloom of the vault that he felt, but sunshine and blue skies and spring and youth. Through the soft mist of delicious tears he gazed at the kindly furrowed face of the now hoary-headed physician, and clasped his great warm hand, holding it tight, forgetting to drop it, as though it were drawing him back to life and love and fellowship. The first few words made it clear that Dom Diego had not heard of Uriel's excommunication. He was new in the city, having been driven there, pathetically enough, at the extreme end of his life by the renewed activity of the Holy Office. "I longed to die in Portugal," he said, with his burly laugh; "but not at the hands of the Inquisition." Uriel choked back the wild impulse to denounce the crueller Inquisition of Jewry, from the sudden recollection that Dom Diego might at once withdraw from him the blessed privilege of human speech. "Didst make a good voyage?" he asked instead. "Nay, the billows were in the Catholic League," replied the old man, making a wry face. "However, the God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, and I rejoice to have chanced upon thee, were it only to be guided back to my lodgings amid this water labyrinth."