grating; and probably it was one of them that dropped this feather, which will be of so much service to us. We can cut it into a pen, and I will now tell you where we can find our ink. Just take this knife of yours, make a small cut in my arm, and--there is plenty of ink for us, although it is red; but that does not matter." With the knife Roger then carefully trimmed the quill of the small feather down into a fairly effective pen, and then turned his attention once more to the cipher. Harry, who for some time past had been feeling the pangs of hunger rather severely, remonstrated with his friend. "Look here, Roger," said he, "let us eat our dinner before going on with that translation. I am feeling very hungry." "No, my friend," replied Roger, "there is no time like the present. For aught we know we may never have another opportunity to work on this cryptogram. Our food can wait, and we shall relish it the more when we have time to eat it; but let us get finished with this matter first." Harry saw the wisdom of his chum's remark, and, casting one more longing glance at the food, rejoined Roger at the stone table, and both lads began to pore over the paper again. "Now," remarked Roger, "you will notice that the lines of figures are far enough apart to allow us to write the letters corresponding to each group of them directly underneath, and that will be a great help to us; but we will write nothing until we are quite certain that we have hit upon the correct method of solving this cryptogram. "You will remember, Harry, that by going over all the figures, we deduced that the number 34 represented the letter E. You will notice that this number, 34, is made up of many different groups of two figures, such as 17 and 17, 14 and 20, 12 and 22, 16 and 18, 15 and 19, 13 and 21, and so forth; but that, I fancy, is only done to make the solving of the cipher more difficult. Now, assuming the letter A to be 30, B to be 31, C to be 32, D to be 33, E, as we have reckoned, 34, let us apply this method to the figures and see what we get. "We have already surmised that the number 1581 stands for no particular letter, but is really what it seems most likely to be, that is, the year in which this cryptogram was invented and written. Besides which, 15 and 81 added, according to the system we are now employing, would make 96, a number which has no letter corresponding to it.