"There is not," he replied, "a single inscription in the British Museum that I can't read. I just sit down before it, with my Hebrew dictionary in my hand—I didn't tell you I learned Hebrew on purpose, did I?—and I read that inscription, however long it is. Ah!"
"This seems extraordinary. Can you show me your alphabet?"
He sat down and began to make figures.
"What is the simplest figure? A circle; a square; a naught? No. A triangle. Very good, then. Do you think they were such fools as to copy a great ugly bull's head when they'd got a triangle ready to their hands, and easy to draw? Not they: they just made a triangle—so—" [he drew an equilateral triangle on its base], "and called it the first letter; and two triangles, one atop the other—so—and called that the second letter. Then they struck their triangle in another position, and it was the third letter; and in another, and its fourth——" Angela felt as if her head was swimming as he manipulated his triangles, and rapidly produced his primitive alphabet, which really did present some resemblance to the modern symbols. "There—and there—and there—and what is that; and this? And so you've got the whole. Now, young lady, with this in your hand, which is the key to all learning—and the Hebrew dictionary, there's nothing you can't manage."
"And an account of this is to be given in your book, is it?"
"That is the secret of my book. Now you know what it was I found out; now you see why my friends paid my passage home, and are now looking for the glory which they prophesied."
"Don't get gloomy again, Mr. Fagg. It is a long lane, you know, that has no turning. Let us hope for better luck."
"No one will ever know," he went on, "the inscriptions that I have found—and read—in the Museum. They don't know what they've got. I've told nobody yet, but they are all in the book, and I'll tell you beforehand, Miss Kennedy, because you've been kind to me. Yes, a woman is best; I ought to have gone to the woman first. I would marry you, Miss Kennedy—I would indeed; but—I am too old, and besides, I don't think I could afford a family."
"I thank you, Mr. Fagg, all the same. You do me a great honor. But about these inscriptions?"
"Mind, it's a secret." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "There's cuniform inscriptions in the Museum with David and Jonathan on them—ah!—and Balaam and Balak—Aho!"—he positively chuckled over the thought of these great finds—"and the whole life of Jezebel—Jezebel! What do you think of that? And what else do you think they have got, only they don't know it? The two tables of stone! Nothing short of the two tables, with the Ten Commandments written out at length!"