CHAPTER XVI.
THE CIPHER LETTER.
The reading-room row, as it was called, had pretty well blown over, when one morning Diggory accosted Jack Vance and Mugford, who were both seated at the latter's desk, sharpening their knives on an oil-stone.
"I say, you fellows, look what I've found." As he spoke, he laid on the desk a slip of paper; it was evidently a scrap torn out of some exercise-book, and inscribed upon it were several lines of capital letters, all jumbled together without any apparent object in their arrangement, and, to be more exact, placed as follows:-- NVVGRMGSVTBNDSVMGSVUVOOLD HKZHHLMGLHFKKVIGSVGDLXZM HLUDZGVIZIGHGZMWRMTRMHRW VGSVXFKYLZIWFMWVIGSVHGZRIH.
"Well, what is there funny about that ?" asked Jack; "it looks to me as if some one had been practising making capitals." "Is it a puzzle ?" inquired Mugford.
"No, but I'll tell you what I think it is," answered Diggory, sitting down, and speaking in a low, mysterious tone: "it's a letter written in cipher." "A letter ?" repeated Mugford, glancing at the paper.

"Why, how could any one read that rubbish--NVVG ?" "Of course they can, if they know the key.

Didn't I say it was written in cipher, you duffer?
Every letter you see there stands for something different." "Then why didn't they write the proper letters at once, and have done with it ?" grumbled Mugford.
"Because, you prize ass," retorted Diggory, with pardonable asperity, "they didn't want it read." "Then if they didn't want it read, why did they write it at all ?" exclaimed Mugford triumphantly.
"Oh, shut up! you're cracked, you--" "Look here," interrupted Jack Vance, "where did you find the thing ?" "Why, you know the window in the box-room that looks out on the 'quad;' well, there's a little crack under the ledge between the wooden frame and the wall, and this note was stuck in there.

I should never have seen it, only I was watching a spider crawling up the wall, and it ran into the hole close to the end of the paper.

Some fellows must be using the place as a sort of post-office; don't you remember Fred Acton made one in the wainscotting at The Birches?
only these fellows have invented a cipher.