repeated at the lower and at the upper part of the stave. Therefore, anybody making a cryptogram of musical notes would probably use one set of these duplicate positions to indicate other letters, and as _h_ is in the lower part of the stave, that is where the variation comes in. Let us experiment by assuming that all the crotchets above _f_ in ordinary musical notation have their usual values, and let us set the letters over their respective notes. Now things begin to shape. Look toward the end of the second line: there is the word _the_ and the letters _f f t h_, with another note between the two _f_s. Now that word can only possibly be _fifth_, so that now we have the sign for _i_. It is the crotchet on the bottom line. Let us go through and mark the _is_. And now observe. The first sign of the lot is _i_, and there is one other sign before the word _the_. The only words possible here beginning with _i_, and of two letters, are_ it_, _if_,_ is_ and _in_. Now we have the signs for _t_ and _f_, so we know that it isn’t _it_ or _if_. _Is_ would be unlikely here, because there is a tendency, as you see, to regularity in these signs, and _t_, the next letter alphabetically to _s_, is at the bottom of the stave. Let us try _n_. At once we get the word _dance_ at the beginning of line three. And now we have got enough to see the system of the thing. Make a stave and put G A B C and the higher D E F in their proper musical places. Then fill in the blank places with the next letters of the alphabet downward, _h i j_, and we find that _h_ and _i_ fall in the places we have already discovered for them as crotchets. Now take quavers, and go on with _k l m n o_, and so on as before, beginning on the A space. When you have filled the quavers, do the same with semiquavers--there are only six alphabetical letters left for this--_u v w x y z_. Now you will find that this exactly agrees with all we have ascertained already, and if you will use the other letters to fill up over the signs still unmarked you will get the whole message:-- _“‘In the Colt Row ken over the coals the fifth dancer slides says Jerry Shiels the horney.’_ [Illustration: “THE FIFTH DANCER SLIDES.”] “‘Dancer,’ as perhaps you didn’t know, is thieves’ slang for a stair, and ‘horney’ is the strolling musician’s name for a cornet player. Of course the thing took a little time to work out, chiefly because the sentence was short, and gave one few opportunities. But anybody with the key, using the cipher as a means of communication, would read it as easily as print. Snape used the same cipher in his jocular little note to the next searcher in the Colt Row staircase.