In the first place the victim was taken to a vault which lay sometimes as many as one hundred feet below the surface of the highway. According to the nature of the charge, he was put through the torture of dislocation by being fastened as to his extremities, with cords, then raised by means of a pulley, kept some time in suspension and suddenly let fall to within a foot of the ground. If on repetition this means was found insufficient to make the "subject" confess, his Christian tormentors resorted to the water-trough, laying him on his back, binding him as to the legs, and having stopped his nostrils, poured water from a considerable height in such a way that its weight fell upon the throat. Occasionally the master of ceremonies turned off the flow, not, however, to give the victim relief, but to prevent his death by suffocation. Perhaps, even then, he refused to surrender, and in order to cure his obstinacy a couple of religious smeared his feet with lard or oil, stretched him on the ground with the soles exposed to a terrific fire, and after half-an-hour's subjection to this ordeal invited him to speak. If he refused, he was put through the torture once more and then removed to a dungeon where he invariably found some others in apparently as bad a plight as his own, who, as soon as he was brought in, began to curse the Inquisition and all connected with it. These were nearly always spies whose evidence constituted subsequently that on which the unfortunate man was eventually condemned to death. The executioners of the torture-room were as a rule monks clothed in cassocks of black buckram, with the head and face concealed under a cowl of the same colour, with holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. A Prior was accustomed to supervise the torture, assisted by a clerk who referred to his spy agents as occasion required, or summoned them from an adjoining hall, where most of them wiled the time away at dice, in order to fortify all accusations against the victim. Sometimes an innocent man, in the vain hope of saving his life, confessed his guilt. He was then accounted a happy repentant and, by a special favour, was permitted to be strangled before being cast into the flames. Those who persisted in their obstinacy were summarily burned to death.