ld fox venturing into the open after the noise of the hunt has died
away in the distance, who knows that for a little while he is safe from
molestation. How delightful town looked, he thought, after the dull life
he had been leading at Stapleton. He had managed to screw another fifty
pounds out of Barnstake, and this very evening, the first of his return,
he would go to Tom Dawson's rooms and there refresh himself with a
little quiet faro or chicken-hazard: very quiet it must of necessity be,
unless he saw that it was going to turn out one of his lucky evenings,
in which case he would try to "put up" the table and finish with a
fortunate coup. But there was one little task that he had set himself to
do before going out for the evening, and he proceeded to consider it
over while discussing his cup of strong green tea and his strip of dry
toast.

To aid him in considering the matter he brought out of an inner pocket
the stolen manuscript of M. Platzoff.

While in Scotland, when shut up in his own room of a night, he had often
exhumed the MS., and had set himself seriously to the task of
deciphering it, only to acknowledge at the end of a terrible half-hour
that he was ignominiously beaten. Whereupon he would console himself by
saying that such a task was "not in his line," that his brains were not
of that pettifogging order which would allow of his sitting down with
the patience requisite to master the secret of the figures. To-night,
for the twentieth time, he brought out the MS. He again read the
prefatory note carefully over, although he could almost have said it by
heart, and once more his puzzled eyes ran over the complicated array of
figures, till at last, with an impatient "Pish!" he flung the MS. to the
other side of the table, and poured out for himself another cup of tea.

"I must send it to Bexell," he said to himself. "If anyone can make it
out, he can. And yet I don't like making another man as wise as myself
in such a matter. However, there is no help for it in the present case.
If I keep the MS. by me till doomsday I shall never succeed in making
out the meaning of those confounded figures."

When he had finished his tea he took out his writing desk and wrote as
under:

"MY DEAR BEXELL,--I have only just got back from Scotland after an
absence of six weeks. I have brought with me a severe catarrh, a
new plaid, a case of Mountain Dew, and a MS. written in cipher. The
first and second