Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1889-02-08

D-I-A-Di ne sail, aloud, repeating tne
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
dies, and hurriedly examined the line. The
first thing that struck him was that the four
letters which went to make up the word
dead were about equidistant in the line of
writing Could it be, He hurriedly counted
tho words in the line; there were sixteen of
them, that is, after the first; one of the let
tiers occurred at tho commencement of every
fifth word.
This was certainly curious. Trembling
with nervousness he took n pencil and wrote
down the initial letter Of every fifth word in
the message, thus:
Do not grevo Cor me, Edward my son, that
am thus suddenly and wichedly done to death by
rebel murderers for nsught happeneth but &C
cording to Gods will. And now farewell, Edward
till we shall meet in heaven. My moneys have
hid, and on account thereof die unto this world,
knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell touch
To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure
he, for n1ught can communicate.
When he had done lie wrote these initials in
a line;
o DEAD mans mount abe
Great heaven! he had hit upon the reading
of the riddle.
Tho answer was Dead Mans Mount" fol-
lowed by the mysterious letters a. B. c.
Breathless with excitement, he checked the
letters again to see if ~ any chance he had
made an error No it was perfectly correct.
Dead Mans Mount" That was and had
been for centuries the name of the curious
tumulus on mound in his own back garden,
the same that learned antiquarians had dis
cussed the origin of so flercely and that his
aunt, the late Mrs. Massey, had, at the cost
of two hundred and fifty pounds, erected q
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 Il coincidence that af-
ter the first word the initial of every fifth
word in the message should spell out tn
name Of this remarkable place, or was it "
arranged He sat down to think it over,
trembling like frightened child Obviously
it was not an accident; obviously the pris-
ouer OF more than two centuries ago had in
his helplossness invented this simple cryptic
graph in the hope that his son, or, if not his
son, some one Of his descendants would dis
cover it and thereby become the master of
the hidden wealth. What place would be
more 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
haunted2 Who would ever think of looking
for modern treasure in the burying place of
the ancient deadi In those days too, Mole
hill or Dead Mans Mount, belonged to the
De Ia Molle family, who had reacquired it on
the break up of the Abbey. 1t was only at
the Restoration, when the Doffereigh branch
came into possession under the viii Of the
second and last bnronet Sir Edward de la
Mole, 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.
mean' Were they perhaps, directions as to
the line to be taken to discover in Harold
could not imagine nor, as n matter of fact,
did he or anybody else ever find out this
either then or thereafter.
Ida, indeed, used nftcrVard laughingly &c
declare that old Sir James meant to indicate
that he considered the whole thing as plain
as \ u c, but that was an explanation which
did not commend itself to Harolds practical
mind.