Find and slice problem

[jont999 at yahoo.co.uk]

Hi guys, been going around in circles with this so I hope you can help!

My current situation is I'm using Grinder and Jython to test pages, but
the log on process is giving me some headaches. After entering the
correct username and password, you then need to enter 3 characters from
the security phrase. I'm attempting to read the HTML to find out with
characters I need (e.g. 1st, 3rd and 6th char) then look up those
values in the security phrase, but I'm getting stuck on the following
function:

<code>

def getValue(page,delimEnd) :
    EndVar = page.find(delimEnd)
    thisVar =  page[EndVar-1:EndVar]
    return thisVar

</code>

<unique code I'm using as a delimeter>
:</strong></td>
	                      <td class="producttableinnerborder"></td>
	                      <td></td>

	                      <td><select name="char1">
</unique code I'm using as a delimeter>

the specific number I require proceeds the ':' at the start of the
code.

What I'm attemping to pass in is some multiline HTML(above) and pick up
the proceeding character, but it seems to be reading from the end of
the HTML instead! I've only been using this setup for a couple of days
so it's probably something simple, anyone care to enlighten me?

cheers,

Jon