This was certainly curious.  Trembling with nervousness he took a pencil and wrote down the initial letter of every fifth word in the message, thus: 

Do not grieve for me, Edward my son, that I am thus suddenly and
D E a

wickedly done to death by rebel murderers, for naught happeneth
d m

but according to God’s will.  And now farewell, Edward, till we
a n

shall meet in heaven.  My moneys have I hid, and on account thereof
s m o

I die unto this world, knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell
u n

touch.  To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure be, for
t a b

nought can I communicate.
c

When he had done he wrote these initials in a line: 

DEadmansmountabc

He stared at them for a little—­then he saw.

Great heaven! he had hit upon the reading of the riddle.

The answer was: 

“Dead Man’s Mount,”

followed by the mysterious letters A.B.C.

Breathless with excitement, he checked the letters again to see if by any chance he had made an error.  No, it was perfectly correct.

“Dead Man’s Mount.”  That was and had been for centuries the name of the curious tumulus or mound in his own back garden.  It was this mount that learned antiquarians had discussed the origin of so fiercely, and which his aunt, the late Mrs. Massey, had roofed at the cost of two hundred and fifty pounds, in order to prove that the hollow in the top had once been the agreeable country seat of an ancient British family.

Could it then be but a coincidence that after the first word the initial of every fifth word in the message should spell out the name of this remarkable place, or was it so arranged?  He sat down to think it over, trembling like a frightened child.  Obviously, it was not accident; obviously, the prisoner of more than two centuries ago had, in his helplessness, invented this simple cryptograph in the hope that his son or, if not his son, some one of his descendants would discover it, and thereby become master of the hidden wealth.  What place would be more likely for the old knight to have chosen to secrete the gold than one that even in those days had the uncanny reputation of being haunted?  Who would ever think of looking for modern treasure in the burying place of the ancient dead?  In those days, too, Molehill, or Dead Man’s Mount, belonged to the de la Molle family, who had re-acquired it on the break up of the Abbey.  It was only at the Restoration, when the Dofferleigh branch came into possession under the will of the second and last baronet, Edward de la Molle, who died in exile, that they failed to recover this portion of the property.  And if this was so, and Sir James, the murdered man, had buried his treasure in the mount, what did the mysterious letters A.B.C. mean?  Were they, perhaps, directions as to the line to be taken to discover it?  Harold could not imagine, nor, as a matter of fact, did he or anybody else ever find out either then or thereafter.