bout to squeeze new meaning
from them.

'Fourscore feet deep _in the north well_,'--'fourscore feet deep in the
well _to north_'--'fourscore feet _north of the deep well_,'--so the
words went round and round in my head, till I was tired and giddy, and
fell unawares asleep.

It was daylight when I awoke, and the wind had fallen, though I could
still hear the thunder of the swell against the rock-face down below. The
fire was yet burning, and by it sat Elzevir, cooking something in the
pot. He looked fresh and keen, like a man risen from a long night's
sleep, rather than one who had spent the hours of darkness in struggling
against a gale, and must afterwards remain watching because, forsooth,
the sentinel sleeps.

He spoke as soon as he saw that I was awake, laughing and saying: 'How
goes the night, Watchman? This is the second time that I have caught thee
napping, and didst sleep so sound it might have taken a cold pistol's
lips against thy forehead to awake thee.'

I was too full of my story even to beg his pardon, but began at once to
tell him what had happened; and how, by following the hint that Ratsey
dropped, I had made out, as I thought, a secret meaning in these verses.
Elzevir heard me patiently, and with more show of interest towards the
end; and then took the parchment in his hands, reading it carefully, and
checking the errors of numbering by the help of the red prayer-book.

'I believe thou art right,' he said at length; 'for why should the
figures all be false if there is no hidden trickery in it? If't had been
one or two were wrong, I would have said some priest had copied them in
error; for priests are thriftless folk, and had as lief set a thing down
wrong as right; but with all wrong there is no room for chance. So if he
means it, let us see what 'tis he means. First he says 'tis in a well.
But what well? and the depth he gives of fourscore feet is over-deep for
any well near Moonfleet.'

I was for saying it must be the well at the Manor House, but before the
words left my mouth, remembered there was no well at the manor at all,
for the house was watered by a runnel brook that broke out from the woods
above, and jumping down from stone to stone ran through the manor
gardens, and emptied itself into the Fleet below.

'And now I come to think on it,' Elzevir went on, ''tis more likely that
the well he speaks of was not in these parts at all. For see here, this
Blackbeard was a spendthrift, squand