/Great heaven! he had hit upon the reading of the riddle./
The answer was:
"/Dead Man's Mount,"
followed by the mysterious letters A.B.C.
Breathless with excitement, he checked the letters again to see if by
any chance he had made an error. No, it was perfectly correct.
"Dead Man's Mount." That was and had been for centuries the name of
the curious tumulus or mound in his own back garden. It was this mount
that learned antiquarians had discussed the origin of so fiercely, and
which his aunt, the late Mrs. Massey, had roofed at the cost of two
hundred and fifty pounds, in order to prove that the hollow in the top
had once been the agreeable country seat of an ancient British family.
Could it then be but a coincidence that after the first word the
initial of every fifth word in the message should spell out the name
of this remarkable place, or was it so arranged? He sat down to think
it over, trembling like a frightened child. Obviously, it was /not/
accident; obviously, the prisoner of more than two centuries ago had,
in his helplessness, invented this simple cryptograph in the hope that
his son or, if not his son, some one of his descendants would discover
it, and thereby become master of the hidden wealth.
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