entered, and leaped upon your shoulders.  With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.  At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination.  When I considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, on the parchment, the skull which I saw designed on it.  You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write on either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire.  Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results.  The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red.  These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the reapplication of heat.

“I now scrutinized the death’s-head with care.  Its outer edges—­ the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum—­were far more distinct than the others.  It was clear that the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal.  I immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat.  At first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull; but, on persevering in the experiment, there became visible at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death’s-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat.  A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid.”

“Ha! ha!” said I, “to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—­a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—­but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain:  you will not find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest.”

“But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat.”

“Well, a kid, then—­pretty much the same thing.”

“Pretty much, but not altogether,” said Legrand.  “You may have heard of one captain Kidd.  I at once looked on the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.  I say signature; because its position on the vellum suggested this idea.  The death’s-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal.  But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else—­of the body to my imagined instrument —­of the text for my context.”

“I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature.”