Something funny about constants

[vbcandies]

I have a program where I define:

Dim strMyLetter as String
Dim strTheChar as String
strTheChar = Chr(5) ' never changes

If strMyLetter = strTheChar Then....... works fine

Since I do big loop of character checking I thought I could changeout strTheChar instead to a constant & gain some program speed:

Const strTheChar as String = &H5

If strMyLetter = strTheChar Then....... now does not seem to work ?????

Is the "&H5" proper, or is something else going wrong?