"Good for you!" was my admiring tribute. The color heightened in her cheeks. "I wonder, now, since you were keen enough to find it, whether you can make anything of it? Honestly—do you know—when I examined that box I never thought to look under the lining."
With her head on one side, she stared regretfully at the bit of paper.
"It's Greek to me," she said.
"To me, too. I 'd give a good deal to know what those hieroglyphs mean."
She clapped her hands with sudden delight.
"My!" she exclaimed, "it's just like a story! Isn't this what you call a cryptograph? It tells where a hidden treasure is, does it not?"
Glancing at her beautiful, animated countenance, I answered truthfully, "Yes"; but added, "It at least points me to a treasure that is unattainable."
For an instant she was puzzled, then she bent suddenly over the cipher and asked no more questions.
We had gone in to the big library table, where, with heads pleasantly close together, we studied in silence the seemingly meaningless characters. But after some minutes devoted to this exercise, we were constrained to give it up as hopeless. This is what the paper bore: