Just at that moment, however, it left her face, and she had to turn her head to follow it, so the conversation came to an end. But the child sat thinking, and this is what it thought: "If the Sunflower follows the Light, it must go somewhere." So that night, as it lay cosy in its little bed, the child plucked up courage to ask the Moon, which peeped in upon it kindly through the window. "What becomes of the Light when the Sun goes out?" echoed the Moon, surprised. Why, it stays, of course. Don't you see it in my face?" "Is that sunlight?" asked the child doubtfully: "it looks so cold and pale." "Come up here and feel how warm it is," retorted the Moon scornfully. "I can't help your having bat's eyes. I can see it quite plain." Now, in those days children generally believed what they were told; so the child lay satisfied, telling itself it knew where the Light went at last, and wishing it had not bat's eyes, when all of a sudden something dark began to creep over the edge of the Moon. "Is there anything the matter, Moon?" it asked anxiously. "It looks as though the Light were going." "Nothing! nothing!" cried the Moon hurriedly: "you are in the way that is all." But the shadow grew and grew till at last the Moon hung like a dark ball in the heavens; and though the Light came back again quickly the child was no longer satisfied, but lay wondering where the Light went when it left the Moon. So the next day, when it sat watching the Sun dip down behind the trees, it made up its mind to follow the Sun as far as it could, and find out what became of the Light when it went out. It unlatched the garden gate and ran swiftly down the dusty road, startling the sleepy birds from their nests in the tall hedges, until it came to a forest, where it could only see a glint here and there through the grey gnarled trees. Redder and redder grew the sky, till, as the child came out upon a rising moor stretching into the blue distance, the Sun was close to the horizon. "I shall be too late! I shall be too late!" cried the child breathlessly, as it ran heedless of stones and briers. The Light faded from the heather and crept up the little figure with its outstretched hands and backward-streaming hair: on and on it ran, with the sunset glow upon its flushed face. 66 "There the spirit of the little child still lives." Stay! Please stay one moment, dear Sun," it pleaded; but in vain. The last gleam died away, and, wearied out with fatigue and disappointment, the child stumbled and fell. But kind Night, who is always so good to the tired children, took the little wanderer in her arms, and Sleep whispered dreams as a lullaby, till Dawn peeping from the east awoke the child. the world for its own. And there was the Light once more claiming All that day the little traveller travelled from east to west, and answered hopefully to the passers-by: "I am going, good people, to find out what becomes of the Light when the Sun goes out - that is a'l" But when Night came it was no nearer the horizon than before. So, day after day, the child sped on, till wearied and flushed it arrived at last upon the shore of the sea just as the sun was setting. And lo! a bright ray of rippled light stretched from the horizon, and, ever widening, touched the child's tired feet as it hurried to the brink. "It is the road at last!" it cried exultantly-"the road to Nowhere." So saying, it ran on and on into the sea, careless of the increasing depth. Then the pitying waves took the little wanderer in their cold hands and laid the child back softly on the beach. "Go home, baby," they said: "the big ocean is not for such as you." "But I only want to find out what becomes of the Light when the Sun goes out," pleaded the child. "Perhaps you can tell me." 'Not we!" laughed the waves. "It leaves us and goes somewhere else, though we stretch right over the edge of the world." "Perhaps the Sunflower was right after all, and it goes nowhere," thought the child. "I must find out where Nowhere is. I will not go back to wonder and wonder and wonder all my life long." So it gathered the shells on the shore-shells that glinted and glowed with many hues, shells that were the tempest's spoil from the quiet depths of the ocean--and bound them together with strands of seaweed until a fragile raft floated on the water. "Do not tempt us! Do not tempt us!" blabbed the little waves; but the child took no heed and pushed out boldly from the shore. Then the waves laughed kindly. "It is a brave child," they said, "and the raft is pretty!" So they let it float on the path of the Light, and even the wind caught the child's outstretched arms and streaming hair, and wafted the little seeker from the shore. And the Sun sank slowly through the golden sky to the golden horizon. "I shall be in time to-day," cried the child joyfully, "for the Light is close on the path beside me." But even as it spoke the great yellow orb touched the horizon and lay for one instant reflected in the rippling waves; the next it sank-—sank—sank! Then, with a cry-" Oh, wait! please wait!" the little child sprang from the raft of shells and followed the Sun on the road to Nowhere! The kind waves carried it to the quiet world in the depth of the sea, where there is no voice, no sound, and the Light shines dim through the changeful currents above. And there the spirit of the little child still lives and wonders, as it wondered before, whither the Light goes. So, every now and again, when the dainty Nautilus rises through the blue-water sky to unfurl its purple sails in this world of ours, the spirit of the little seeker begs for a place in the pearly boat, so that it may try once more to see what becomes of the Light when the Sun goes out. And that is why the Nautilus is generally seen drifting with all sails set along the ray of rippling Light which stretches over the sunset sea from the land of Nowhere. F. A. STEEL. FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO LATE ELIZABETHAN DAYS. "Sir, there lies such secrets in this . . . box, which none must know but the King." IT The Winter's Tale. T is always interesting to handle and read letters written in bygone times, whether they were written by persons whose names are still well known to us, or by persons of whom nothing remains but the quaint expression of their thoughts upon some old and faded bit of paper. It is more than interesting-it is fascinating to unearth old ciphers, which now reveal to us the precious secrets so carefully hidden in the cipher-writings of past centuries by almost every one who had to communicate by letter with an other. In these ciphers at which we will look, we shall see in some the ingenuity of kings spent upon their contrivance; in others we shall see the ancient and subtle methods devised by statesmen and priests to disguise a meaning, to hide a plot, or to cover a treason; and we shall see also the secret methods of less prominent men of bygone days who, for safety in troubled times, disguised their written thoughts in ciphers of many kinds. Later, we shall see something of the methods of modern cipher-writers, for even now-a-days cipher is used to a considerable extent. But let the devices speak for themselves. Whenever possible, I obtained from the owners or guardians of rare documents permission to take facsimiles of them, and, in other instances, when the mode of cipher found by me was of special interest, I made illustrations of the method employed. The Wooden Roller cipher, which I show in Nos. 1 and 2, is a very early, perhaps the earliest, instance of the use of this mysterious art of secret communication. The Foreign Office of the ancient Spar tans may not have been quite so elaborately skilful as regards their use of cipher as our own Foreign Office at the present day, but I think that the meaning of the letters on the slip of parchment shown in No. 2 would not easily be read by any one who might come across this slip, and who was not already partly enlightened by the description printed below No. 2 and by the illustration in No. I. This form of cipher was used No. 1.- The Wooden Roller Cipher. 1. Showing the strip of parchment wound around the wooden roller. Copyright by John Holt Schooling. 4057 NG HE RITI OF T r w IONI CRE RAT' SE by the magistrates of the ancient Spartans when sending secret orders to a general who was engaged in an expedition against the enemy. The magistrate and the general each kept by him a wooden roller, both of which rollers were identical in length and thickness. When the magistrate wanted to write a secret order, he took a long narrow slip of parchment and wound it very neatly around his roller in a spiral form (see No. 1). He then temporarily fixed both ends of the slip to the roller, and wrote along the parchment what he wished to say, writing horizontally from end to end of the roller, and thus letting his writing cross over many adjacent edges of the parchment. When the message was finished, the slip was detached from the roller, straightened out to remove the tell-tale curl of it, and despatched to the general in command. This worthy forthwith produced his roller, wound the slip upon it, and read the order sent to him, which would then again be in the shape illustrated by No. 1. It should be noted that unless the two rollers be of identical circumference, the writing cannot appear perfect and consistent, but, even when wound on a roller, still looks incoherent. For convenience of illustration, only two lines of writing have been written along the rolled-up slip. If the whole surface of the roller shown in No. 1 had been covered with writing, the vacant spaces seen in No. 2 would be non-existent, and the slip would then have looked much more confused than it does. Also, for convenience, the slip in No. 2 is much shorter and wider than it should be for actual use. A longer and narrower slip would contain only a single letter, or part of a single letter, across its width, instead of the groups of three or four completed letters which may be seen to run across the width of the slip in No. 2, but which is nevertheless sufficiently confusing to the uninitiated, who do not think of winding it around a roller, and thereby reading upon the slip the words, This is an illustration of the most ancient form of secret writing. No. 2-The Wooden Roller Cipher. II. Showing the strip of parchment unwound from the wooden roller. (Reduced size.) The Pass-word cipher, illustrated in Nos. 3 and 4, is an ingenious device of great antiquity. In its earliest and less ingenious form it was used by Julius Cæsar: the historian Suetonius relates that when Cæsar would convey any private business he did usually write it by substituting other letters. of the alphabet for those which composed his real meaning-such as D for A, E for B, and so for the rest. The cipher now shown is much more subtle than Julius Cæsar's method, and it is based upon the use of a password known to the two persons who use this cipher, and who each possess the key shown in No. 4. At the first glance the secret message in No. 3 looks like a modern cryptogram, but inspection of No. 4 will show that each of the nine letters which compose the pass-word PRUDENTIA has an alphabet of its own--all of which nine alphabets have been used in the writing of the secret message in No. 3. This secret message is easily read by the aid of the key shown in No. 4. Here is the method. The first word of the message (JXU) is solved by looking at the alphabet belonging to the first letter of the pass-word (P), and by then inspecting the ordinary alphabet at the top of No. 4 thus we see that J in the "p-line" stands for t in the top alphabet, JXU KGDVAWJK HPODIT No. 3.-The Pass Word Cipher. I. The secret message: The Soldiers mutiny for want of Victuals; supply us, or they will Revolt to the Enemy. |