" On the day following the said discovery of
the poison, in the evening, being the eve of the
Sabbath, and my wife, Esther, having just
kindled the lights, according to the custom of
our people, the magistrate of the town of
Chillon, attended by his officers, rode up to the
door of my dwelling, dismounted, and entered
therein. They first seized me, and then bound
my arms together behind my back with great
cruelty, so that the blood forced its way
beneath my nails and dropped from the ends of
my fingers to the ground. They next searched
every corner of my house, trying by blows and
threats to make my wife and daughter, Rebecca,
reveal the secret hiding-place in which I kept
my poisons. My heart was rent at the sight of
the sufferings and indignities they were made to
undergo, but I was powerless to help them, and
I could only beseech them to bear patiently the
trials to which they were subjected. After
searching every part of my house, and finding
nothing of what they were in search, I was
dragged away to prison. The next day the
magistrate and other officials came to me in my
cell, and read to me the confession of
Balavignus, concerning which they put to me many
questions. I denied that I had sent any poison
to him, or had ever thought of so doing, or
that I had ever heard any of our people even
speak of such a thing. Finding that I
continued firm in my denial, and that I was
prepared to swear on the Five Books of Moses that
knew nothing of any plot for poisoning the
wells, I was ordered to be racked till I should
be tortured into making confession of a falsehood.
Four times were my limbs torn asunder
by that hellish invention, till I could feel no
longer, after which I was left for eleven days
on the floor of my dungeon undisturbed. On
the twelfth day I was taken from prison to the
place of execution, to witness the murder of
my countryman, Solomon Chomer, a man of
wonderful knowledge, and greatly learned in the
philosophy of the Egyptians and Chaldeans.
He, too, had been sentenced to die for the same
crime with which I was charged, and I was
placed near him to be a witness of his sufferings.
Together we called on the God of our fore-
fathers for fortitude, and, verily, the patience
with which he bore the cruel tortures to which
he was subjected could only have been born of
insensibility. He was stretched on a wheel,
and after his arms and legs had been broken in
sundry places by the bar of the executioner, he
was unbound and laid on the ground, his body
folded back on his legs so that his head rested
on his heels. He was again questioned touching
the crime with which he was charged, but
he gave no answer; whereupon he was laid on
the wood which had been prepared for the
purpose, the fire was kindled, and his spirit rose with
the smoke which ascended from the pile.

"I was being taken back to prison, my heart
quaking with fear at the doom that was before
me, when one cried 'Let us not suffer this Jew
to escape us,' and another, 'Let us throw him
in the well he poisoned for us.' Then there was
a great cry, and much tumult, and I was taken
from the officers and dragged to a well outside
the town in which the poison had been found,
and hurled therein: the body of the apostate
Jew, which had lain there unburied, being cast
down upon me. The water reached above
my shoulders when I stood upon my feet, and I
was forced to stand on the tips of my toes to
keep my mouth above water. Standing thus,
with my flesh torn, bruised and bleeding, I
heard the planks laid across the top of the well,
and stones thrown on these, and then all was
silent, and I was left to die an agonising death.
After a while I felt that my feet were sinking
deeper in the sand and gravel, and I had to
cling to the sides of the well to keep myself
from instant death.

"I had been in this position several hours when
I heard a noise above me as though one were
removing the stones, then a voice, which was
that of my wife, Esther, calling my name. My
heart leapt within me at the sound of her voice,
and I answered joyfully, upon which she bade
me be of good cheer. Presently she called again,
and told me to tie the rope she was letting down
about my body. I had much difficulty in doing
this, because I was forced to loosen my hold
and suffer myself to sink below the water till it
forced itself beneath my eyelids. I succeeded
at last in tying the cord tightly beneath my
armpits, and was then drawn up to the well's
mouth, and laid on the grass by my beloved
wife and daughter. While I was slowly
recovering the use of my limbs, which had been
much weakened by the torments I had undergone,
they occupied themselves in restoring the
planks and stones to their places. When this
had been done, we left the spot while it was yet
dark, and I hid myself in a tree in a wood near
my house, to which place Rebecca brought me
food. Our escape from this country to Poland
was accomplished with great difficulty and much
suffering; for the deadly fear which filled men's
minds on account of the fearful ravages of the
Black Death, then raging all over the world, was
turned into hate towards our nation, who were
everywhere charged with causing the mortality
by mixing poison in the wells and the sources
of rivers."

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

STILL dealing, as in the last of these Small-
Beer Chronicles, on Deaths, I have to record
the dissolution, not this time of any particular
individual, but of an institution—a very old and
respectable institution—now no more. It was
called TRANSPORTATION. This antiquated system
has gone the way of the door-knocker and the
old-fashioned dinner, and is virtually dead.

Every year some of the difficulties connected
with life increase. The remedies which used
to apply to our social diseases either cease
to act or are discarded as unsuited to the age
we live in. What a simple and swiftly acting
remedy we used to have for that worst of all
social maladies, called crime! When that disease