ntation of a chessboard, and set out the
letters on it, in their order, like this:--

i h n d t r e i
o s t o c i h e
c w o o e m n s
s t o o o o f a
e t o o o o c v
a o o o o o r e
a h t k r i e t
l e w n n a a t

"Now, there was my chessboard with my letters on it. I tried reading
them downward, across, upward and diagonally, in the direction of the
moves of different chess pieces--king, queen, rook and bishop. Nothing
came of that, whatever I did; the thing was as unreadable as ever. But
there remained one chess-move to try--the eccentric move of the knight;
the move of one square forward, backward or sideways, and then one
square diagonally, or, as it has sometimes been more concisely
expressed, the move to the next square but one of a different colour
from that on which it rests. I tried the knight's move, and I read the
cypher.

"I began at the top left-hand corner, just as one does in reading a
book. I read the moves downward--_i_ to _w_, _e_ and _h_, and found that
led to nothing. So I took the one alternative move, and, with a little
consideration, skipped along from _i_ to _t_ in the second line of
squares, _t_ in the top line, _h_ in the second line, _e_ in the third,
_r_ in the top and _e_ in the second. That gave me an idea. There were
the letters _i, t, t_, followed by the word _here_. I tried back
from the _i_ again, and taking in the reverse order the _w, e_ and _h_
which I had first given up, I read my own name, as you can see it, from
the _h_ on the bottom line but one, moving upward. So I had the words
_Hewitt here_. I need not carry you through all the steps, which will
now be plain enough to you. But I found that the message actually began
in the _right_-hand corner, and read thus, the noughts counting for
nothing--

"_'Invent loss disc take at once Martin Hewitt here fear watch.'_

"The noughts were plainly merely inserted to fill in unneeded squares,
and keep the rest of the figures in their proper relative places when
the cypher was written in line. At first I was a little puzzled to
understand what seemed to be the first word _invent_. But it was quite
clear that _loss disc_ meant 'loss discovered,' so I concluded that here
in the beginning was a contraction also, and that _in_ was a separate
word. In that case _vent_ could be a contraction for no other word but
'vent