“Look at the parchment; do you not see one or two letters showing through nearly all the little holes?”
“Yes.”
“What are they?”
“b. u. t. o. n. e. m. u. s. t. s. e. e. t. h. a. t. a. l. i. g. h. t. i. s. n. e. v. e. r. c. a. r. r. i. e. d. i. n. f. r. o. n. t. o. f. t. h. e. s. l. i. t. s. i. n. t. h. e.,” read Audry, a letter at a time.
“And what does that spell?” said Aline.
“Oh, I see,— It spells, ‘but one must see that a light is never carried in front of the slits in the.’ How clever of you to find it out!”
“Well, it was more or less accident; the parchment is exactly the size of the paper and as I shut the book I naturally made it all even. So, when I opened it in this room, it was lying even on the page and I could not help seeing the letters and what they spelt.”
“I should never have noticed it, Aline; why I did not even notice at once that the letters spelt anything after you had shown me.”
“Let us go back to the beginning and then,” said Aline, “we shall discover what it is all about.”
So she turned to the beginning of the book and placed the parchment over the page and found that it began like this;—“Having regard to the changes and misfortunes of this life and the dangers that we may incur, I have provided for myself and my heirs a place of refuge and a way of escape in the evil day. This book containeth a full account of the building of Holwick Hall; so that it will be easily possible to follow that which I now set down. Below the Library on the west side of the house just above the level of the moat, there is a secret chamber, which communicateth with a passage below the moat that hath an exit in the roof of the small cave in the gully that lieth some two hundred paces westward of the Hall of Holwick. The way of entrance thereto is threefold. There is an entrance from the library itself. There is also an entrance from the small Chamber that occupieth the southwest corner of the building on the topmost floor.”