eters, rods, or something of the kind. If I could convince
myself that "dqbo" represented some English measurement I might find the
key and system of the code.

Either "feet," "yard" or "rods" were words of four letters--either one
of which might be represented by "dqbo." Then I tested each one to see
if I could establish a pattern.

I tried first the old code-system of having each letter in the word
represent some other letter a certain number of spaces backward or
forward in the alphabet. Suppose a man wanted to disguise the word
"cab." He might do so, very easily, by spelling it "dbc"--using, instead
of the right letter, the letter immediately following it in the
alphabet, "d" for "c," "b" for "a," etc. Testing for "feet" as a
possible interpretation of "dqbo" I saw that "f" was the second
letter in the alphabet beyond the letter "d"--first letter in the
script-word--but I found that such a relation could not possibly hold
with "e" and "q" respectively, the second letters. "Yard" or "rods"
failed the same test. Nor by any juggling of this simple code, counting
so many spaces backwards or forwards, could I make it come out true.

Some time before I had decided that it was unlikely to the verge of
impossibility that any message could be made up completely of four
letter words. It seemed likely, at first, that letters had been cut
from each word in order to make them of four letters. Working on this
hypothesis I tested for "meters" but the word "dqbo" could not be made
to conform.

At that point it was necessary to begin on another tack. I smoked a
while in silence, hoping that some idea, some little inspiration that
so often furnished the key for such a mystery as this, would come to me.
I had a dim thought that, since the words were all of four letters and
could not be made intelligible by any shifting of the alphabet, that
perhaps it had undergone some double transformation--changed first from
words into some other symbol form, and then back into words. But I
couldn't seem to get hold.

If I could only see the key! Possibly it was extremely simple, just
before my eyes if I could only grasp it. It wasn't reasonable, I
thought, for a lone man to leave a hidden message without giving some
key, however adroit, for the reader to translate it. Jason hadn't
written that message for his own amusement. He had inscribed it to be
read by some one who came after--perhaps by himself when old age had
dulled his memory.

Wo