it left a long scratch, and that some yellow
stain instantly showed up. I asked the man to stop his work for a moment,
and ran up the ladder to examine the place. The yellow stain was there,
sure enough, and what had come away was a thick black pigment, which had
evidently been laid on with the brush after the glass had been burnt, and
could therefore be easily scraped off without doing any harm. I scraped,
accordingly, and you will hardly believe--no, I do you an injustice; you
will have guessed already--that I found under this black pigment two or
three clearly-formed capital letters in yellow stain on a clear ground.
Of course, I could hardly contain my delight.

'I told Lord D---- that I had detected an inscription which I thought
might be very interesting, and begged to be allowed to uncover the whole
of it. He made no difficulty about it whatever, told me to do exactly as
I pleased, and then, having an engagement, was obliged--rather to my
relief, I must say--to leave me. I set to work at once, and found the
task a fairly easy one. The pigment, disintegrated, of course, by time,
came off almost at a touch, and I don't think that it took me a couple of
hours, all told, to clean the whole of the black borders in all three
lights. Each of the figures had, as the inscription said, "a writing on
their vestures which nobody knew".

'This discovery, of course, made it absolutely certain to my mind that I
was on the right track. And, now, what was the inscription? While I was
cleaning the glass I almost took pains not to read the lettering, saving
up the treat until I had got the whole thing clear. And when that was
done, my dear Gregory, I assure you I could almost have cried from sheer
disappointment. What I read was only the most hopeless jumble of letters
that was ever shaken up in a hat. Here it is:

_Job_. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAV
IBASBATAOVT

_St John_. RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTA
AESGIAVNNR

_Zechariah_. FTEEAILNQDPVAIVMTLEEATTOHIOO
NVMCAAT.H.Q.E.

'Blank as I felt and must have looked for the first few minutes, my
disappointment didn't last long. I realized almost at once that I was
dealing with a cipher or cryptogram; and I reflected that it was likely
to be of a pretty simple kind, considering its early date. So I copied
the letters with the most anxious care. Another little point, I may tell
you, turned up in the process which c