"Look here!" said Diggory, accosting Fletcher Two in the playground: "what made you tell us to come to the reading-room last night? How did you know there was going to be a row?"
"I didn't," murmured the other warily. "All I knew was that they were going to put 'Rats' in the 'stocks;' I hadn't the faintest idea there was going to be such a fine old rumpus."
"Umph! hadn't you?" muttered Diggory, turning on his heel; "I know better."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CIPHER LETTER.
The reading-room row, as it was called, had pretty well blown over, when one morning Diggory accosted Jack Vance and Mugford, who were both seated at the latter's desk, sharpening their knives on an oil-stone.
"I say, you fellows, look what I've found." As he spoke, he laid on the desk a slip of paper; it was evidently a scrap torn out of some exercise-book, and inscribed upon it were several lines of capital letters, all jumbled together without any apparent object in their arrangement, and, to be more exact, placed as follows:—
NVVGRMGSVTBNDSVMGSVUVOOLD HKZHHLMGLHFKKVIGSVGDLXZM HLUDZGVIZIGHGZMWRMTRMHRW VGSVXFKYLZIWFMWVIGSVHGZRIH.
"Well, what is there funny about that?" asked Jack; "it looks to me as if some one had been practising making capitals."
"Is it a puzzle?" inquired Mugford.