About the same time six other religious commenced a still longer captivity in the prisons of Omura. Three were Dominicans, one a Franciscan, and the two others Jesuits, Father Charles Spinola, and Ambrose Fernandez, a Brother of the Society. When first they were taken prisoners they had been thrown for greater security into a sort of subterranean cave where they lay huddled together and deprived of light. It was not until the close of the year 1622, that an order arrived for the removal of these religious and other Christian prisoners to Nangasaki, and for their subsequent execution. They were thirty in number as they marched out of Omura; and partly by sea and partly by land, each with a rope round his neck, and an executioner at his side, they went on their way to the old city of the Christians. It was not considered prudent that they should enter Nangasaki, so the inhabitants went forth in multitudes to meet them, and flinging themselves at their feet, begged with many tears their blessings and their prayers; and thus escorted, the martyrs stood at length upon a high hill between the city and the sea. A moment of suspense followed. Some victim or spectator was yet wanting to the solemnity; and every eye was directed towards the town, from whence a troop of persons might be descried approaching,--men, women, and children; thirty of the former, with, of course a larger proportion of the latter. Every doubt as to the ultimate destination of this company soon vanished when it was seen that they were dressed in their robes of ceremony, and with looks of gladness and of holy joy were ascending to the calvary of the Christians. One of the new-comers had been guilty of giving shelter to a missionary; the others were his ten next neighbours, with their families, besides the wives and children of some previous martyrs; and of this almost incredible number of victims, amounting to upwards of a hundred, some were to be beheaded, while others were to perish by the slower martyrdom of fire. A throne had been erected overlooking this scene of slaughter, and when the governor had taken his seat upon it, those who were to undergo the sentence of fire were fastened to their stakes, but loosely, in order that they might escape if only they chose to apostatize, and then the executioners prepared to decapitate the others. Among these last was Isabella, the widow of the man in whose house Father Spinola had been taken captive, and her son Ignatius, a child now about four years old, but at that time a new-born infant, whom he had baptized on the very evening before his arrest. From the stake to which he was already bound, the father had been exhorting both natives and Portuguese to perseverance, telling them, almost in a spirit of prophecy, that they need not look for any cessation in the persecution, which would go on increasing in fury from day to day; when chancing to see Isabella standing in the crowd, and anxious for the fate of her child, he