ave got
him!"

The bewildered banker looked backwards and forwards from the paper to
the clerk, and from the clerk to the paper. "I don't understand it," he
said. "Do you?"

Still preserving the appearance of humility, Dennis asked leave to
venture on a guess. The perforated paper looked, as he thought, like a
Puzzle. "If we wait for a day or two," he suggested, "the Key to it may
possibly reach us."

On the next day, nothing happened. On the day after, a second letter
made another audacious demand on the fast failing patience of Sir Giles
Mountjoy.

Even the envelope proved to be a Puzzle on this occasion; the postmark
was "Ardoon." In other words, the writer had used the postman as a
messenger, while he or his accomplice was actually in the town, posting
the letter within half-a-minute's walk of the bank! The contents
presented an impenetrable mystery, the writing looked worthy of a
madman. Sentences appeared in the wildest state of confusion, and words
were so mutilated as to be unintelligible. This time the force of
circumstances was more than Sir Giles could resist. He took the clerk
into his confidence at last.

"Let us begin at the beginning," he said. "There is the letter you saw
on my bed, when I first sent for you. I found it waiting on my table
when I woke; and I don't know who put it there. Read it."

Dennis read as follows:

"Sir Giles Mountjoy,--I have a disclosure to make, in which one of the
members of your family is seriously interested. Before I can venture to
explain myself, I must be assured that I can trust to your good faith.
As a test of this, I require you to fulfil the two conditions that
follow--and to do it without the slightest loss of time. I dare not
trust you yet with my address, or my signature. Any act of
carelessness, on my part, might end fatally for the true friend who
writes these lines. If you neglect this warning, you will regret it to
the end of your life."

To the conditions on which the letter insisted there is no need to
allude. They had been complied with when the discoveries were made at
the back of the milestone, and between the pages of Gibson's history.
Sir Giles had already arrived at the conclusion that a conspiracy was
in progress to assassinate him, and perhaps to rob the bank. The wiser
head clerk pointed to the perforated paper and the incomprehensible
writing received that morning. "If we can find out what these mean," he
said, "you may be better able, s