and although the unfortunate gardener was hanged, Hassan decided to spare Cervantes' life, and for some reason known to himself purchased the poet from Dali Mami for five hundred crowns. Perhaps the tyrant expected an immense ransom from a man whose nobility of bearing must have impressed him. But be that as it may, Cervantes at once began to set on foot a third scheme of escape. He sent a letter to the Spanish Governor of Oran, asking for assistance, but this was intercepted, and the poet was sentenced to two thousand blows, which, however, were never inflicted. Cervantes now conceived the idea of inducing the Christian population of Algiers to rise and capture the city. In this project he was assisted by some Valencian traders, but the scheme was revealed to Hassan by a Dominican monk, and the Valencians, hearing of the priest's treachery, and fearing lest they might be implicated, begged Cervantes to make his escape on a ship which was about to start for Spain. But Cervantes refused to desert his friends, and when he was once more dragged before Hassan with a hangman's rope round his neck, and threatened with instant death unless he revealed the names of his accomplices, he obstinately refused to betray them. Meanwhile his family were doing their utmost to procure his release, and in order that they might collect his ransom, his mother, the better to inspire pity, actually passed herself off as a widow, though her husband, a medical practitioner of great age, was still alive. By tremendous exertions they succeeded in collecting two hundred and fifty ducats, which they paid to a certain monk who went regularly to Algiers, but this Hassan refused to accept, asking for one prisoner of distinction, called Palafox, the sum of one thousand ducats. The monk seems to have acted as an official ransomer to the Spaniards, and when Hassan found that he would pay no more than five hundred ducats for Palafox, he offered to ransom Cervantes for that sum by way of making a bargain. So after five years of slavery the author of Don Quixote was set free, and returned to his native soil. But the Dominican monk who had revealed to Hassan his attempted escape, and who was probably afraid that Cervantes would charge him with this treachery, no sooner heard that he had landed in Spain than he spread false reports regarding his conduct. These, however, Cervantes was easily able to rebut, and his character as a heroic leader among the captives was amply vindicated. The captive's story, for which Cervantes had had the mournful privilege of collecting so much 'local colour,' is recounted to Don Quixote by an escaped slave, who, with his Moorish lady-love, has come to the inn where the woeful knight is sojourning. I shall adhere to Cervantes' manner of recounting it in the first person, but as it occupies a considerable portion of the first part of his famous history, considerations of space will necessitate its condensation.