That night Frank came downstairs with a thick well-thumbed volume in his hand.

‘This is Mr. Pepys,’ said he solemnly.

‘What a funny name!’ cried Maude.  ’It makes me think of indigestion.  Why?  Oh yes, pepsine, of course.’

’We shall take a dose of him every night after dinner to complete the resemblance.  But seriously, dear, I think that now that we have taken up a course of reading, we should try to approach it in a grave spirit, and endeavour to realise—­Oh, I say, don’t!’

‘I am so sorry, dear!  I do hope I didn’t hurt, you!’

‘You did—­considerably.’

’It all came from my having the needle in my hand at the time—­and you looked so solemn—­and—­well, I couldn’t help it.’

‘Little wretch—!’

’No, dear; Jemima may come in any moment with the coffee.  Now, do sit down and read about Mr Pepys to me.  And first of all, would you mind explaining all about the gentleman, from the beginning, and taking nothing for granted, just as if I had never heard of him before.’

‘I don’t believe—­’

’Never mind, sir!  Be a good boy and do exactly what you are told.  Now begin!’

‘Well, Maude, Mr. Pepys was born—­’

‘What was his first name?’

‘Samuel.’

‘Oh dear, I’m sure I should not have liked him.’

’Well, it’s too late to change that.  He was born—­I could see by looking, but it really doesn’t matter, does it?  He was born somewhere in sixteen hundred and something or other, and I forget what his father was.’

‘I must try to remember what you tell me.’

’Well, it all amounts to this, that he got on very well in the world, that he became at last a high official of the navy in the time of Charles the Second, and that he died in fairly good circumstances, and left his library, which was a fine one, to one of the universities, I can’t remember which.’

‘There is an accuracy about your information, Frank—­’

’I know, dear, but it really does not matter.  All this has nothing to do with the main question.’

‘Go on, then!’

’Well, this library was left as a kind of dust-catcher, as such libraries are, until one day, more than a hundred years after the old boy’s death, some enterprising person seems to have examined his books, and he found a number of volumes of writing which were all in cipher, so that no one could make head or tail of them.’

‘Dear me, how very interesting!’

’Yes, it naturally excited curiosity.  Why should a man write volumes of cipher?  Imagine the labour of it!  So some one set to work to solve the cipher.  This was about the year 1820.  After three years they succeeded.’

‘How in the world did they do it?’

’Well, they say that human ingenuity never yet invented a cipher which human ingenuity could not also solve.  Anyhow, they did succeed.  And when they had done so, and copied it all out clean, they found they had got hold of such a book as was never heard of before in the whole history of literature.’