Harold placed the piece of paper upon the mantelpiece, and sitting down in an arm-chair opposite began to contemplate it earnestly, as indeed he had often done before.  In case its exact wording should not be remembered, it is repeated here.  It ran:  “Do not grieve for me, Edward, my son, that I am thus suddenly and wickedly done to death by rebel murderers, for nought happeneth but according to God’s will.  And now farewell, Edward, till we shall meet in heaven.  My moneys have I hid, and on account thereof I die unto this world, knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell touch.  To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure be, for nought can I communicate.”

Harold stared and stared at this inscription.  He read it forwards, backwards, crossways, and in every other way, but absolutely without result.  At last, wearied out with misery of mind and the pursuit of a futile occupation, he dropped off sound asleep in his chair.  This happened about a quarter to eleven o’clock.  The next thing he knew was that he suddenly woke up; woke up completely, passing as quickly from a condition of deep sleep to one of wakefulness as though he had never shut his eyes.  He used to say afterwards that he felt as though somebody had come and aroused him; it was not like a natural waking.  Indeed, so unaccustomed was the sensation, that for a moment the idea flashed through his brain that he had died in his sleep, and was now awakening to a new state of existence.

This soon passed, however.  Evidently he must have slept some time, for the lamp was out and the fire dying.  He got up and hunted about in the dark for some matches, which at last he found.  He struck a light, standing exactly opposite to the bit of paper with the copy of Sir James de la Molle’s dying message on it.  This message was neatly copied long-ways upon a half-sheet of large writing paper, such as the Squire generally used.  It’s first line ran as it was copied: 

“Do not grieve for me, Edward, my son, that I am thus suddenly and wickedly done.”

Now, as the match burnt up, by some curious chance, connected probably with the darkness and the sudden striking of light upon his eyeballs, it came to pass that Harold, happening to glance thereon, was only able to read four letters of this first line of writing.  All the rest seemed to him but as a blue connecting those four letters.  They were: 

D...............E...............a...............d

being respectively the initials of the first, the sixth, the eleventh, and the sixteenth words of the line given above.

The match burnt out, and he began to hunt about for another.

“D-E-A-D,” he said aloud, repeating the letters almost automatically.  “Why it spells ‘Dead.’  That is rather curious.”

Something about this accidental spelling awakened his interest very sharply—­it was an odd coincidence.  He lit some candles, and hurriedly examined the line.  The first thing which struck him was that the four letters which went to make up the word “dead” were about equi-distant in the line of writing.  Could it be?  He hurriedly counted the words in the line.  There were sixteen of them.  That is after the first, one of the letters occurred at the commencement of every fifth word.