‘But I should not imagine that your father knew any one who lived in 1571,’ said Mr Grope.
‘Ah! but is the 1571 a date at all? That’s the question,’ said the Fellow. ‘My father took an interest in that old sinner, and saw something of Truck in his last days in the cottage. The sea has encroached now and washed most of it away. And Truck left him his curiosities—stuffed birds and china, and his old order-books and log-books. I’ll look them out. I would lay a wager that he wrote that inscription.’
‘It will take very strong evidence to make that believed,’ said Mr Grope. Nevertheless he felt uneasy, and heartily wished that the Fellow had not happened to take the matter up. Meanwhile the Fellow searched for Truck’s relics, which were now in the possession of his brother; and the next morning saw him in Mr Grope’s study together with an antique volume, not bound in ‘brass and wild boar’s hide,’ but in dilapidated leather, with a musty-fusty odour half a century old. With a sinking heart, Mr Grope felt, when first he looked at it, that the historical grandeur of his inscription was about to fall to the ground.
‘This was Truck’s note-book,’ said the Fellow. ‘Look here, Mr Grope.’ And there, on the first page, written in a manner which implied that the paper had been rather greasy from the first, were the words ‘Capt Truck.’
‘And the cave at Q—— is mentioned pretty often among his hieroglyphics,’ said the ruthless Fellow, turning over the dirty pages. ‘“Directions to be left in the Q—— cave.” I expect there are others there besides the inscription you found. Look here; don’t you think this must be the identical one?’ And he pointed to some lines which ran obliquely across a page: ‘Directions left for Scroggs. Follow to Normandy. Rum 20, brandy 15, 71 kegs to return.’
Mr Grope stood stricken to the soul, but not a muscle of his face moved. He silently compared this newest discovery with the copy he had made in his note-book, in the first flush of his hopes.
There was no denying that this was the true solution of the mystery, and that the Ridolfi Plot was nowhere. It was singular that neither he himself, nor Sir H—— T——, nor the other gentlemen who had written on the subject, had thought of the possibility of the man in the cave using straightforward English. At least Mr Grope erred in good company; but still he felt that he should have to bear most of the ridicule, as the originator of the historical theory, and the investigator who had attacked the smuggler’s prosaic inscription with five ciphers used by queens and princes in the sixteenth century. However, he was determined not to shew his chagrin, and even asked the Fellow to dine with him that evening.
Mr Grope wrote honourably to the Minerva to explain the true state of the case. He acknowledged that further research proved both himself and his friend Sir H—— T—— to be mistaken on the subject of the writing in the cave at Q——. Then he mentioned Truck and the smugglers, and gave the new interpretation, not without a groan as he wrote ‘rum’ where formerly he had written ‘rosarum mensis.’ He also communicated with Sir H—— on the subject, and Sir H—— dryly replied that he wondered the writing should look as if it were three hundred years old, when it was really only sixty or seventy. No more was said about it in the Minerva. And as to the Q—— people, of course they politely refrained from letting Mr Grope see that they laughed at him, all except a bluff old personage who exclaimed: ‘So your conspirator against Queen Elizabeth turned out to be an old smuggler after all!’
The wounds of Mr Grope’s vanity began to heal in time. They smarted somewhat when the course of winter lectures at the Q—— Athenæum was opened, for he had intended to hold forth triumphantly on the bone-cave and the historical inscription. And they bled afresh in the following spring when the annual fashionable pilgrimage to the cave took place. Still the high-priest has not deserted the temple, for Mr Grope is not easily put down; and he often repairs to his old subterranean haunts and picks up bones and flint implements. But the entrance to the new cavern containing the inscription has been mysteriously filled up again; and the gnome who is the nominal custodian of the cave whispers to a subordinate official of the Q—— Athenæum: ‘’Twas Mr Grope, he closed it ’imself, I’ll warrant. You see, he couldn’t abide it, after that there mistake of ’is that they laughed at so. Smugglers ’iding there; and Mr Grope, he takes the writin’ for summut to do with grand folks that lived three ’undred year ago!’
Poor Mr Grope! That was all that came of the inscription in the Q—— bone-cave.