you see the same phrase "_Biliteral Cipher_," but it does not look strange to you, does it? Still, if you will study it carefully you will see that the first _i_ is different from the second, and that the first _l_ in "_Biliteral_" is different from the second _l_. You have guessed by this time that the phrase "_Biliteral Cipher_," as it stands here, also contains a hidden word. The word is "_the_." This phrase was made to contain the word "_the_" by using the two forms of letters which you see in the upper part of Plate IX and which were called "_doubles_" by the printers who used them several hundred years ago. Now do you begin to see how important these two forms are? Look again at the little Shakespeare poem in the Italic alphabet on Plate VIII. Now that you know about _doubles_ you can see, if you have learned to use your eyes, that we have hidden a secret within this poem too. Would you like to know what it is? We will help you to work it out by giving you what is called a _Classifier_ which will make it easy to _decipher_ the verse. On this Classifier, which you will find on Plate X, the very same Italic letters that you saw in Plate IX have been arranged so that all the _a_ form letters are above the shaded part and all the _b_ form letters below. Now if you will tear out this whole page and carefully cut out these shaded parts you can place this page over the lines of the poem in italic letters. This will help you to decide to which form the letters of the poem belong. Place the Classifier over the poem so that the first letter, the capital =H= of _Have_, is between the _a_ form and the _b_ form capital =H= on the Classifier. You will see that this capital =H= of _Have_ is the _a_ form. Now below the Classifier has been placed something which will help you still more. All the words of the poem have been divided and have been placed into groups of five letters. As we decided that the =H= of _Have_ belongs to the _a_ form, we have placed an _a_ beneath the =H= in the first group of five letters. Now move the Classifier so that the =a= in _Have_ comes between the _a_ form =a= and the _b_ form =a= on the Classifier. You will see that this letter also belongs to the _a_ form. If you will do the same to the rest of the letters of this first group you will find that they are all _a_ form letters. Now what letter of the Alphabet does a group of five _a_'s stand for?--=A=, does it not? So the first letter in our secret is =A=. Now place the Classifier over the rest of the letters of the poem and see to what form they belong, just as we have done for you in the first group. If you do your work carefully you will find the hidden secret. If we can hide one word in "_Biliteral Cipher_" and a sentence in a short poem, do you not see how a whole story could be hidden so carefully within a book that it might not be discovered for many, many years? Helen Louise Ricketts [Illustration: PLATE I ALPHABET by ALBERT DUeRER (A. D. 1525)]