Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-01-22

sount thereof die unto this world, knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell touch. To whom God shall appoint shall all my treas ure be, for naught can I communicate"
 We'll, Harold stared and stared at this in- scription. He read it forward, backward, crosswaysNnd in every other way, but ab- solutely without result. At last, wearied out with misery of mind and the pursuit of a futile occupation. he dropped off sound asleep in his chair. That happened about a quar- ter to II o'clock The next thing that he knew was that he suddenly woke up; woke up completely, passing quickly from condition of deep sleep to ono of wakefulness as though he had never shut his eyes. He used to say afterward that he felt as though somebody had come and aroused him; it was not like natural waking. Indeed, so un- accustomed was the sensation that for a mo- ment the idea flashed through his brain that be had died in his sleep and was now awaken ing to a new state of existence
 This soon passed, however. Evidently he must have slept some time, for the lamp was out and the fire dying. He got up and hunted about in the dark for some matches, which at last he found He struck light, stand ing exactly opposite to the bit of paper with the copy of Sir James de Ia Molles dy- ing message on 1t. This message was neatly copied long ways upon a half sheet of large writing paper, such as the squire generally used. Its first line ran as 1t was copied: Do not grieve fe1 me, Edward, my son, that am thus suddenly and wickedly done" Now, as the match burned up, by some curious chance, connected probably with the darkness and the sudden striking of the light upon his eyeballs, it came to pass that Har old, happening to glance thereon, was only ah1o to 1of h{s Nv-ckli lipo of writing, all the rest seeming to him but as 8 blur connecting those four letters. They were:
 D B a d
 being respectively the initial letters of the first, the sixth, the eleventh and the six teenth words of the line given above. The match burned out, and he began to hunt about for another.
 DEAD" he said, aloud, repeating tho letters almost automatically "Why, it spells 'Dead.' That Is rather curious" Something about this accidental spelling awakened his interest very sharply-it was an odd coincidence. He lighted some can dles, and hurriedly examined the line. The l first thing that struck him was that the four l letters which went to make up the word "dead" were about equidistant in the line of writing. Could it bet He hurriedly counted l the words in the line; there were sixteen of 1 them, that is, after the first; one of the let ! ters occurred at the commencement of every | fifth word.
 l This was certainly curious. Trembling ! with nervousness be took pencil and wrote l down tho initial letter of every fifth word in the message, thus:
 1 Do not srieve for me- Edward my son, that am thus suddenly and wickedly done to death by | o1>oI cordins to Gods will And now farewell. Edward. till we shall meet in heaven. My moneys have I hid, and on account thereof die unto this world, knowing thas.not one piece shall Cromwell touch. To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure be, for naught can communicate.
 When he had done he wrote these initials in @ line:
 DEad mans mount abe
 Great heaven! he had hit upon the reading ! of the riddle.
 The answer was "Dead Mans Mount" fol- lowed by the mysterious letters A. B. c.
 Breathless with excitement, he checked the letters again to sec If by any chance he had 1 made an error. No, it was perfectly correct ! Dead Mans Mount" That was and had been for centuries the name of the curious | tumulus or mound in his own back garden, | the same that learned antiquarians had dis ! cussed the origin of so f1ercely and that his aunt, the late Mrs. Massey, had. at the cost of two hundred and fifty pounds, erected @ mushroom shaped roof over in order to prove that the hollow in the top had once been the agreeable country seat of an ancient British family.
 Could it then be but coincidence that af- | ter the first word the initial of every fifth l word in the message should spell out the 1 name of this remarkable place, or was 1t 30 l arranged3 He sat down to think it over, trembling like Q frightened child. Obviously it was not an accident; obviously the pris- oner of more than two centuries ago had in his helplesaness invented this simple crypto- graph in the hope that his son, or, if not his son, some one of his descendants would dis cover 1t and thereby become the master of the hidden wealth. What place would be moro likely for the old knight to have chosen to secrete the gold than one that even in those | days had the uncanny reputation of being hauntedf Who would ever think of looking for modern treasure in the burying place of the ancient deadl In those days. too, Mole hill or Dead Mans Mount, belonged to the De la Molle family, who had reacquired it on the break up of the Abbey. It was only at the Restoration, when the Doherleigh branch came into possession under the will of the
 second and last baronet, Sir Edward de la
 Molle, who died in exile, that they failed to recover this portion of the property. And If
 this was so, and Sir James, the murdered
 man, had buried his treasure in the mount,
 what did the mysterious letters A. B. C..
 meant Were they, perhaps, directions as to
 the line to be taken to discover tti Harold
 could not imagine, nor, as . matter of fact,
 did he or anybody else ever find out this ! either then or thereafter
 Ida, indeed, used atterward laughingly to
 declare that old Sir James meant to indicate
 that he considered the whole thing as plain ! as A B c, but that was an explanation which
 did not commend itself to Harolds practical l mind.
 CHAPTER xXXIX.
 BUT NOT TO RED.
 Harold glanced at the clock-it was nearly
 in the morning-time to go to bed if he was l going But he did not feel inclined to 20 to