“What can this mean?” said I to myself. I broke the loaf. It was scooped out and contained, in the cavity thus formed, a piece of parchment and a very small ink-horn with a pen. I hastily examined the parchment and found on one side of it in great sprawling letters, like a child’s writing, these words: “What shall I do?” A light came into my mind as brilliant as the sun. I was calm and self-possessed; my good angel recalled to me the friendly words of Pilate at our parting: “Send for me if you get into trouble.” I wrote as clearly and as rapidly as possible in the dim twilight: “Tell all to Pontius Pilate. Be quick or I die!” I put the parchment into the loaf and pressed its crust closely together again. I now heard the stern voice of Magistus exclaim to some one: “What are you dallying about?” The basket ascended. I trembled. I almost fainted. My entire hope, my life, hung upon a thread—upon a hair! How fortunate it was that I did not send up the parchment alone! My good angel guided me. Magistus looked into the basket, and seeing it ascend with the loaf in it, exclaimed, “He is too weak to take out his bread. I will give him a little wine.” He seemed to walk away and my heart commenced beating again. At that moment another little flower, another sunbeam, fell from the ceiling to my feet: and the lid was closed. High hope in my soul obliterated for a time even the torture of thirst. I was calm. I was happy. My invisible friend had received my message. If he delivered it, I was safe: for Pilate would certainly release me. What if Pilate was absent or dead or displaced? Such thoughts were torture. Still, the new governor, whoever he was, would befriend me. I determined not to give way until night. Magistus came earlier than usual, and threw me down a goat-skin bottle of wine and water. I thanked him with the utmost deliberation. He did not speak in reply. He only wished to fan the embers of life, to prolong my sufferings. Human nature revolts at the contemplation of such a demon. Such men are indeed rare, but such evil spirits are common. They are present to our souls; cunning, cruel, malignant; infusing their poison into our thoughts and affections; endeavoring to make us such as Magistus. The worst evils here are moderated and repressed by the counteracting pressure of good spheres. To see evil in its true light, you must see it in the world of spirits and in hell—evil utterly divorced from good, projecting itself outwardly in its own brutal forms, and working out its frightful destiny. I waited for my deliverance with a sublime hope, a calm and fixed faith. I knew it was coming. It came. Magistus had at length reached, as all wicked men do either in this world or the next, the limit of his power, the fatal line; after which comes the rebound, the reaction, the punishment, the disgrace, the sure recoil upon one’s self of all the evil he meditates against others.