Now after this last audit, I waited day and night with great expectation for the _Aucto de Fie_,[74] as the Portugals call that chief holy-day of theirs wherein they set at large for ever the prisoners of the Inquisition, the words meaning _Act of Faith_. I slept but little of nights at this time, for there come ringing down the galleries the shrieks of those under the hands of the tormentors, so that I would lie awake and pray for those poor souls to whom God had awarded that further agony he had spared to me. For I knew from much that I had heard and read before coming to this place that ’twas customary to condemn obstinate heretics, before burning them, to undergo many and severe tortures, and this out of pure spite and devilish malice, as one might say, since recantation would now do them no good. From these I was only exempted lest I should die under ’em, and not live to the _Aucto_. Thus waiting, and thus disturbed by these mournful sounds, the days seemed to me to pass mighty slowly, and I was fain to occupy myself in casting up my calendar on the wall, though I had lost many days therein during my sickness; but by making allowance for this, I made out that I had spent over three years in the Holy House. I gave much time also to finishing my inscription in the wall, on which I had bestowed extraordinary pains, being careful to write it not alone in English, but also in the best Portuguese I could frame, setting forth the day wherein I had entered the House, and likewise that I should leave it for the flames of the burning-place on St James’s day 1672. And on the day that I finished the carving of this record, the which was performed with a certain nail that I had by chance picked up, when as a carpenter was a-mending the lock on my door, I sat looking upon it long, until the daylight ceased, and the _alcaide_ brought in my supper. Now this was the day whereon he was wont to ask for and carry away such clothes as I might desire to have washed, and I looked for him to do this as usual. But he spake not of the matter, and when I did put him in mind thereof, made answer in a surly enough fashion, that he would see to’t on the morrow. Methought I knew then what should happen; nevertheless, that I might be sure, I asked of him-- “What day is this, _Seignior alcaide_?” “The Vigil of St James,” says he, and I knew that I was right.