to the mind that was wearied with
writing the first, or perhaps to mislead. Now if you had read it all
you would have seen the entire truth. The man that wrote this was a
villain: he has written it so that the upper part throws suspicion
upon his benefactor. Whether he did this by accident or on purpose
the Lord only knows. But, to my personal knowledge, he was about the
meanest, smallest, sneakin'est rascal that it was ever my luck to
light on. And yet he knew what honor was, and duty, for he had
associated all his life with the noblest gentleman that ever lived.
But I will say no more about it. See! Here is the full translation of
the whole thing."

And he laid down before Hilda another paper, which was written out in
the usual manner.

"If you look at the first paper," said Obed, pointing to the one
which gave the translation of each letter, above described, "you will
see that the first part rends like your translation, while the lower
part has no meaning. This arose from the peculiar nature of the man
who wrote it. He couldn't do any thing straight. When he made a
confession he wrote it in cipher. When he wrote in cipher he wrote it
so as to puzzle and mislead any one who might try to find it out. He
couldn't write even a cipher straight, but began in the middle and
wound all his letters about it. Do you see that letter 'M' in the
eleventh line, the twelfth one from the right side, with a cross by
the side of it? That is the first letter. You must read from that,
but toward the left, for seventeen letters, and then follow on the
line immediately above it. The writing then runs on, and winds about
this central line till this rectangular block of letters is formed.
You supposed that it read on like ordinary writing. You see what you
have found out is only those lines that happened to be the top ones,
reading in the usual way from left to right. Now take this first
paper. Begin at that cross, read from right to left for seventeen
letters, and what do you find?"

[Illustration.]

Hilda did so, and slowly spelled out this:

"MY NAME IS NOT KRIEFF."

A shock of astonishment passed through her.

"Krieff?" she repeated--"Krieff?"

"Yes, Krieff," said Obed; "that was his last alias."

"Alias? Krieff?" faltered Hilda.

"Yes. He had one or two others, but this was his last."

"His? Whose? Who is it, then, that wrote this?"

"Read on. But it is not worth while to bother with this block of
letters. See; I h