Lawless glanced at it, and then, despite the gravity of his position, burst into a hearty laugh, whereat the officer, the sergeant and the privates all scowled at him reprovingly. On one side of the paper were scrawled the following incriminating words:
"Conshus,
Contitious,
Concious."
On the other side were a number of strange-looking figures bearing some resemblance to a capital L.
"Why," said Lawless when he had recovered from his hilarity, "I was trying some days ago to spell 'conscious' and, not being quite sure about it, wrote it down different ways to see which looked right. Of course," he added confidently, "it was the last one."
"And these?" queried the officer, pointing to the straggling hieroglyphics.
"Oh, I was uncertain how to write a capital q—I don't often write that letter as a capital—and I experimented. Those are the experiments."
"They are a secret code," said the officer accusingly.
"Secret fiddlesticks!" ejaculated Lawless.
"You refuse to decipher it?"
"Confound it all, there's nothing to decipher."