He made no difficulty about it whatever, told me to do exactly as
I pleased, and then, having an engagement, was obliged--rather to my
relief, I must say--to leave me. I set to work at once, and found the
task a fairly easy one. The pigment, disintegrated, of course, by time,
came off almost at a touch, and I don't think that it took me a couple of
hours, all told, to clean the whole of the black borders in all three
lights. Each of the figures had, as the inscription said, "a writing on
their vestures which nobody knew".
'This discovery, of course, made it absolutely certain to my mind that I
was on the right track. And, now, what was the inscription? While I was
cleaning the glass I almost took pains not to read the lettering, saving
up the treat until I had got the whole thing clear. And when that was
done, my dear Gregory, I assure you I could almost have cried from sheer
disappointment. What I read was only the most hopeless jumble of letters
that was ever shaken up in a hat. Here it is:
_Job_. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAV
IBASBATAOVT
_St John_. RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTA
AESGIAVNNR
_Zechariah_. FTEEAILNQDPVAIVMTLEEATTOHIOO
NVMCAAT.H.Q.E.
'Blank as I felt and must have looked for the first few minutes, my
disappointment didn't last long.
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