“All alike,” complained the younger man.  “Maddening.”  Then his face lighted.  “No, see here—­lower left hand.”

The last stroke of the brush, down in the corner, formed a loose “O.  W.”

“From Wutzler.  Must mean something.”

For all that, the painted lines remained a stubborn puzzle.

“Something, yes.  But what?” The padre pulled out a cigar, and smoking at top speed, spaced off each character with his thumb.  “They are all alike, and yet”—­He clutched his white hair with big knuckles, and tugged; replaced his mushroom helmet; held the paper at a new focus.  “Ah!” he said doubtfully; and at last, “Yes.”  For some time he read to himself, nodding.  “A Triad cipher.”

“Well?” resumed Heywood, patiently.

The reader pointed with his cigar.

“Take only the left half of that word, and what have you?”

“‘Lightning,’” read Heywood.

“The right half?”

“‘Boat.’”

“Take,” the padre ordered, “this one; left half?”

“‘Lightning,’” repeated his pupil.  “The right half—­might be ‘rice-scoop,’ But that’s nonsense.”

“No,” said the padre.  “You have the secret.  It’s good Triad writing.  Subtract this twisted character ‘Lightning’ from each, and we’ve made the crooked straight.  The writer was afraid of being caught.  Here’s the sense of his message, I take it.”  And he read off, slowly:—­

“A Hakka boat on opposite shore; a green flag and a rice-scoop hoisted at her mast; light a fire on the water-gate steps, and she will come quickly, day or night.—­O.W.”

Heywood took the news coldly.  He shook his head, and stood thinking.

“That won’t help,” he said curtly.  “Never in the world.”

With the aid of a convert, he unbarred the ponderous gate, and ventured out on the highest slab of the landing-steps.  Across the river, to be sure, there lay—­between a local junk and a stray papico from the north—­the high-nosed Hakka boat, her deck roofed with tawny basket-work, and at her masthead a wooden rice-measure dangling below a green rag.  Aft, by the great steering-paddle, perched a man, motionless, yet seeming to watch.  Heywood turned, however, and pointed downstream to where, at the bend of the river, a little spit of mud ran out from the marsh.  On the spit, from among tussocks, a man in a round hat sprang up like a thin black toadstool.  He waved an arm, and gave a shrill cry, summoning help from further inland.  Other hats presently came bobbing toward him, low down among the marsh.  Puffs of white spurted out from the mud.  And as Heywood dodged back through the gate, and Nesbit’s rifle answered from his little fort on the pony-shed, the distant crack of the muskets joined with a spattering of ooze and a chipping of stone on the river-stairs.

“Covered, you see,” said Heywood, replacing the bar.  “Last resort, perhaps, that way.  Still, we may as well keep a bundle of firewood ready here.”