It was clear that
      the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I
      immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the
      parchment to a glowing heat. At first, the only effect was the
      strengthening of the faint lines in the skull; but, upon
      persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the
      corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
      death’s-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first
      supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me
      that it was intended for a kid.”

      “Ha! ha!” said I, “to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—a
      million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—but
      you are not about to establish a third link in your chain—you
      will not find any especial connexion between your pirates and a
      goat—pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they
      appertain to the farming interest.”

      “But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat.”

      “Well, a kid then—pretty much the same thing.”

      “Pretty much, but not altogether,” said Legrand. “You may have
      heard of one Captain Kidd. I at once looked upon the figure of
      the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I
      say signature; because its position upon the vellum suggested
      this idea. The death’s-head at the corner diagonally opposite,
      had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was
      sorely put out by the absence of all else—of the body to my
      imagined instrument—of the text for my context.”

      “I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and
      the signature.”

      “Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly
      impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune
      impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was
      rather a desire than an actual belief;—but do you know that
      Jupiter’s silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a
      remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series of accidents
      and coincidences—these were so very extraordinary. Do you observe
      how mere an accident it was that these events should have
      occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been,
      or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire,
      or without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in
      which he appeared, I should never have become aware of the
      death’s-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?”

      “But proceed—I am all impatience.”

      “Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current—the
      thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere upon
      the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must
      have had some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have
      existed so long and so continuous, could have resulted, it
      appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure
      still remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed his plunder for a
      time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors would scarcely have
      reached us in their present unvarying form. You will observe that
      the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about
      money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the
      affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident—say
      the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality—had deprived him
      of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become
      known to his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that
      treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
      in vain, because unguided attempts, to regain it, had given first
      birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now
      so common. Have you ever heard of any important treasure being
      unearthed along the coast?”

      “Never.”

      “But that Kidd’s accumulations were immense, is well known. I
      took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them;
      and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a
      hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so
      strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit.”

      “But how did you proceed?”

      “I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat;
      but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating
      of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so I
      carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it,
      and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull
      downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In
      a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed
      the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in
      several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in
      lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain
      another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see
      it now.”

      Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my
      inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red
      tint, between the death’s-head and the goat:

     “53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡. )4‡);806*;48†8¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†
     ;46(;88*96*? ;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8¶8*;4069285);)
     6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4(‡?3
     4;48)4‡;161;:188;‡? ;”

      “But,” said I, returning him the slip, “I am as much in the dark
      as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me upon my
      solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable
      to earn them.”

      “And yet,” said Legrand, “the solution is by no means so
      difficult as you might be lead to imagine from the first hasty
      inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might
      readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a
      meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not
      suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse
      cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a
      simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude
      intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key.”

      “And you really solved it?”

      “Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand
      times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have
      led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be
      doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the
      kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application,
      resolve.