I told them plainly, and as a business man, that they would only be running their heads into a trap if I wrote any such order, but that the cheque was negotiable anywhere. It could pass through any number of hands even from the Continent. This little bit of information, I believe, preserved my life. For the very next day I caught one of the jackdaws that came to seek shelter about my dungeon, entering through a crack high in the arched roof. I wrote the message--already reproduced--on paper stuffed in a rook's quill which I picked up off the floor, and fastening the long feather to the jackdaw's tail with whitey-brown thread unwound from a button, I let the bird flutter away. Now I come to a circumstance that I have something of delicacy about. Bairns' plays are not suitable for men of ripe years, you say. I agree, but when sometimes one has children, and especially an only son upon whom the care and guidance of a large business will some day devolve, there are certain kinds of plays that cannot be hastily condemned even by the wisest. It was the year when the fever, now called typhoid, but then simply the "Fivvor," made ravages in Breckonside. No one knew what brought it, and none knew why it went away. But during its stay, both myself and my son Joseph were attacked by it among the first. My wife, Mrs. Yarrow, had her hands full with the two of us. Neither was very ill, but the time of convalescence was long; and had it been any other doctor than Dr. Hector who attended me, I would have been out a dozen times a day. But--and I like him for it, for I have the faculty myself--Dr. Hector has a way with him that makes people think twice before disobeying him. Joe was in his room, I in mine, and there was between us a thick partition, such as are to be found in old houses, of double oak, with an air space between. Now my brain being by nature busy, and to amuse the boy most of all, I concocted a simple code of sound signals which Joe and I called our "Morse." We would often amuse ourselves the day by the length, by rapping our messages the one to the other. It went like this. I made a little tablet for Joe, and kept one by me till we had both learned the inscription by ear, as it were. +-----------------------+ | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | +-------|---|---|---|---+ | 1 | A | B | C | D | E | +---|---|---|---|---|---+ | 2 | F | G | H | I | K | +---|---|---|---|---|---+ | 3 | L | M | N | O | P | +---|---|---|---|---|---+ | 4 | Q | R | S | T | U | +---|---|---|---|---|---+ | 5 | V | W | X | Y | Z | +-----------------------+ It consisted of the alphabet arranged in five lines, and numbered above, and at the side. Then the intersection of the number of knocks, two series with a pause between, beginning with the horizontal top figures gave the letter. It was simplicity itself when once learned.