"And," he continued, "you and I are going to solve it if we sit up all
night!"
"How do you propose to begin?"
"Well, as it appears to mean nothing in particular, as it stands, I
thought of beginning by assuming that the letters have other values
altogether. Therefore, upon the basis that _e_ is the letter which most
frequently occurs in English, with _a_, _o_, _i_, _d_, _h_, _n_, _r_,
afterwards, I had thought of resolving it into its component letters."
"But would that rule apply to mediæval English?"
"Ah," said Lorian thoughtfully, "most sage counsellor! A wise and timely
thought! I'm afraid it wouldn't."
"What now?"
Lorian scratched his head in perplexity.
"Suppose," he suggested, "we write down the words plainly, and see if,
treating each one separately, we can find other meanings to them."
Accordingly, upon a sheet of paper, I wrote:
Wherso eer thee doome bee
Looke untoe ye strypped tree
Offe ragged staffe. Upon itte ley
Golde toe greene ande kay toe kay.
Our efforts in the proposed direction were rewarded with poor success.
Some gibberish even less intelligible than the original was the only
result of our labour.
Lorian threw down his pencil and began to reload his pipe.
"Let us consider possible meanings to the original words," he said. "Do
you know of anything in the neighbourhood which might answer to the
description of a 'strypped tree'?"