Thus the mystery of the old man of the mountain was settled by the three soldiers, after much discussion, and the cask of gold was trundled back into the dark corner of the house, where they threw their waste, and such guineas and double-eagles as had joggled out upon the floor were kicked after it. Directly after the lost envelop had turned up in the pool of lye, Lieutenant Coleman had made his arrangements for the manufacture of blank paper for the diary. The Blue Book was his personal property, but before commencing its destruction he counseled with Bromley, who, as a man of letters, he felt, under the circumstances, had an equal interest with himself in the fate of one half of their common library. Bromley, seated on the bank alongside the leach, was engaged at the time in making a birch broom, and as he threw down the bunch of twigs a shade of disappointment overspread his handsome face. He said that he had never thoroughly appreciated the work of the learned board of compilers until his present exile, and that it contained flights of eloquence and scraps of poetry--if you read between the lines. "But, putting all joking aside," said Bromley, "begin with a single leaf by way of experiment, and let us see first what will be the effect on the fiber of the paper; and then, if everything works well, we will first sacrifice the index and the extracts from the Acts of that renegade Congress whose imbecility has blotted a great nation from the map of the world." Lieutenant Coleman had more confidence in the result of the experiment they were about to make than had Bromley, for the increased length of his entry in the diary shows that he was no longer economizing paper: "April 26, 1865. Wednesday. We have cut out ten leaves of the index of the Blue Book, which we scattered loosely on the surface of the lye in the cavity of the rock. After twenty minutes I removed a leaf which had undergone no perceptible change in appearance, and washed it thoroughly in running water. While so doing I was pleased to find that with the lightest touch of my fingers the ink dissolved, leaving underneath only a faint trace of the letters, which would in no way interfere with my writing. It required much patience to cleanse the paper of the slimy deposit of potash. "Thursday, April 27, 1865. Of the leaves prepared yesterday, two, which were less carefully washed than the others, are somewhat yellowed by the potash and show signs of brittleness. "April 30. We have continued our paper-making experiments, and find that a longer bath in a weaker solution of lye has the same effect on the ink, and is less injurious to the fiber of the paper. Philip has burned a lot of holes in one of the cracker-boxes, in which we place the leaves, leaving them to soak in the running water."