"Welcome, brother Hugh, welcome!" he cried in those rich sonorous tones of his. "My duty to-day is a very simple yet a very pleasant one; again I bid you welcome. Here in this book I hand to you are the institutes of the Order of St Bruno, the rules which govern our organisation, and the explanation thereof as supplied by our founder, good Bruno Delganni, on whom, we say, may the earth rest very lightly, for he has done England much good! Take them; study them at your convenience. They will prove to you we are not quite so black here as our habit would seem to indicate. Here, also, is the scroll which testifies that this day you have become a member with us and are entitled to all the rights, privileges, and appurtenances of that distinguished and cherished position. It is written in cypher numerals, as you will observe-- another idea and protection of our founder's--but if you take page one of the institutes you will find that is the key to the riddle and that the numbers stand as references to the particular letters of the first few lines. "Thus you will observe the first word on page one is `The.' Hence in the cipher document the letter `t' will be marked by the number `one,' the letter `h' by the number `two,' and the letter `e' by the number `three.' Indeed, this is the cipher code we always make use of when we write to our members and communicate with each other in confidence, so I advise you, if you don't want to carry the institutes about with you constantly, to learn by heart the first few lines of the handbook, and then you will have in your mind the key to the cryptic language we make use of.