nd, walking me back into the room, halted
opposite the fire-place.

"There," said he, "look at that. It is a most remarkable object."

[Illustration: THE INVERTED INSCRIPTION.]

I followed the direction of his gaze and saw an oblong frame enclosing a
large photograph of an inscription in the weird and cabalistic
arrow-head character. I looked at it in silence for some seconds and
then, somewhat disappointed, remarked:

"I don't see anything very remarkable in it, under the circumstances. In
any ordinary room it would be, I admit; but Stephen has just told us
that his uncle was something of an expert in cuneiform writing."

"Exactly," said Thorndyke. "That is my point. That is what makes it so
remarkable."

"I don't follow you at all," said I. "That a man should hang upon his
wall an inscription that is legible to him does not seem to me at all
out of the way. It would be much more singular if he should hang up an
inscription that he could <i>not</i> read."

"No doubt," replied Thorndyke. "But you will agree with me that it would
be still more singular if a man should hang upon his wall an inscription
that he <i>could</i> read--and hang it upside down."

I stared at Thorndyke in amazement.

"Do you mean to tell me," I exclaimed, "that that photograph is really
upside down?"

"I do indeed," he replied.

"But how do you know? Have we here yet another Oriental scholar?"

Thorndyke chuckled. "Some fool," he replied, "has said that 'a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.' Compared with much knowledge, it may
be; but it is a vast deal better than no knowledge. Here is a case in
point. I have read with very keen interest the wonderful history of the
decipherment of the cuneiform writing, and I happen to recollect one or
two of the main facts that seemed to me to be worth remembering. This
particular inscription is in the Persian cuneiform, a much more simple
and open form of the script than the Babylonian or Assyrian; in fact, I
suspect that this is the famous inscription from the gateway at
Persepolis--the first to be deciphered; which would account for its
presence here in a frame. Now this script consists, as you see, of two
kinds of characters; the small, solid, acutely pointed characters which
are known as wedges, and the larger, more obtuse characters, somewhat
like our government broad arrows, and called arrow-heads. The names are
rather unfortunate, as both forms are wedge-like and both resemble
arrow-h