So he set to work to make his preparations for leaving Honham and this country for good and all.  He wrote to land agents and put Molehill upon their books to be sold or let on lease, and also to various influential friends to obtain introductions to the leading men in New Zealand.  But these matters did not take up all his time, and the rest of it hung heavily on his hands.  He mooned about the place until he was tired.  He tried to occupy himself in his garden, but it was weary work sowing crops for strange hands to reap, and so he gave it up.

Somehow the time wore on until at last it was Christmas Eve; the eve, too, of the fatal day of Ida’s decision.  He dined alone that night as usual, and shortly after dinner some waits came to the house and began to sing their cheerful carols outside.  The carols did not chime in at all well with his condition of mind, and he sent five shillings out to the singers with a request that they would go away as he had a headache.

Accordingly they went; and shortly after their departure the great gale for which that night is still famous began to rise.  Then he fell to pacing up and down the quaint old oak-panelled parlour, thinking until his brain ached.  The hour was at hand, the evil was upon him and her whom he loved.  Was there no way out of it, no possible way?  Alas! there was but one way and that a golden one; but where was the money to come from?  He had it not, and as land stood it was impossible to raise it.  Ah, if only that great treasure which old Sir James de la Molle had hid away and died rather than reveal, could be brought to light, now in the hour of his house’s sorest need!  But the treasure was very mythical, and if it had ever really existed it was not now to be found.  He went to his dispatch box and took from it the copy he had made of the entry in the Bible which had been in Sir James’s pocket when he was murdered in the courtyard.  The whole story was a very strange one.  Why did the brave old man wish that his Bible should be sent to his son, and why did he write that somewhat peculiar message in it?

Suppose Ida was right and that it contained a cypher or cryptograph which would give a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure?  If so it was obvious that it would be one of the simplest nature.  A man confined by himself in a dungeon and under sentence of immediate death would not have been likely to pause to invent anything complicated.  It would, indeed, be curious that he should have invented anything at all under such circumstances, and when he could have so little hope that the riddle would be solved.  But, on the other hand, his position was desperate; he was quite surrounded by foes; there was no chance of his being able to convey the secret in any other way, and he might have done so.