He leads them on an expedition to a particular tree and has Jupiter climb it until he finds a skull nailed at the end of one branch. At Legrand's direction, Jupiter drops the bug through one eye socket and Legrand paces out to a spot where the group begins to dig. Finding nothing there, Legrand has Jupiter climb the tree again and drop the bug through the skull's other eye; they choose a different spot to dig, this time finding two skeletons and a chest filled with gold coins and jewelry. They estimate the total value at $1.5 million, but even that figure proves to be below the actual worth when they eventually sell the items. Legrand explains that on the day he found the bug on the mainland coastline, Jupiter had picked up a scrap piece of parchment to wrap it up. Legrand kept the scrap and used it to sketch the bug for the narrator; in so doing, though, he noticed traces of invisible ink, revealed by the heat of the fire burning on the hearth. The parchment proved to contain a cryptogram, which Legrand deciphered as a set of directions for finding a treasure buried by the infamous pirate Captain Kidd. The final step involved dropping a slug or weight through the left eye of the skull in the tree; their first dig failed because Jupiter mistakenly dropped it through the right eye instead. Legrand muses that the skeletons may be the remains of two members of Kidd's crew, who buried the chest and were then killed to silence them. The story involves cryptography with a detailed description of a method for solving a simple substitution cipher using letter frequencies. The encoded message is:   53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);80 6*;48†8¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88) 5*†;46(;88*96*?;8)*‡(;485);5*† 2:*‡(;4956*2(5*-4)8¶8*;40692 85);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡1   The key (with letter frequency) is:  a 5 (12) b 2 (5) c - (1) d † (8) e 8 (33) f 1 (8) g 3 (4) h 4 (19) i 6 (11) j k l 0 (6) m 9 (5) n * (13) o ‡ (16) p .