“I routed it out of a secret drawer in Uncle Tom’s bureau!” he exclaimed.
“I have no doubt of its purport. It indicates the spot where all his
savings are secreted.”
“You have not deciphered it yet, have you?”
“No. I want your help; I can make neither heads nor tails of the scrawl,
though I sat up all night studying it.”
“Come along,” said I, “I wish you joy of your treasure. I’ll read the
cypher if you give me time.” So we sat down together at my desk, with the
slip of paper before us. Here is the inscription:--
[Illustration]
“Now,” said I, “the order of precedence among the letters, according to
the frequency of their recurrence, is this, e a o i t d h n r s u y c f g
l m w b k p q x z. This, however, is their order, according to the number
of words begun by each respectively, s c p a d i f b l b t, etc. The most
frequent compounds are th, ng, ee, ll, mm, tt, dd, nn. Pray, Matthew, do
you see any one sign repeated oftener than the others in this
cryptograph?”
“Yes, 8; it is repeated twenty-three times,” said Fletcher, after a pause.
“Then you may be perfectly satisfied that it stands for e, which is used
far oftener than any other letter in English. Next, look along the lines
and see what letters most frequently accompany it.”
“2 § undoubtedly; it follows 8 in several places, and precedes it in
others. In the third line we have 2 § 8--82 §--§ 8--8 § 8 and then 2 § 8
again.”
“Then we may fairly assume that 2 § 8 stands for _the_.”
“_The_, to be sure,” burst forth Fletcher. “Now the next word will be
money. No! it can’t be, the e will not suit; perhaps it is treasure, gold,
hoard, store.”
“Wait a little bit,” I interposed. “Now look what letters are doubled.”
“88 and 22,” said my friend Mat.
“And please observe,” I continued, “that where I draw a line and write A
you have e, then double t, then e again. Probably this is the middle of a
word, and as we have already supposed 2 to stand for t, we have--ette--, a
very likely combination. We may be sure of the t now. Near the end of the
third line, there is a remarkable passage, in which the three letters we
know recur continually. Let us write it out, leaving blanks for the
letters we do not know, and placing the ascertained letters instead of
their symbols. Then it stands--eχtheχeth--heχeheχ ethe--. Now here I have
a χ repeated four times, and from its position it must be a consonant. I
will put in its place one consonant after another. You see r is the only
one which turns the letters into words.--_erthereth--here_ . _here
the--_surely some of these should stand out distinctly separated--_er
there th-- here_ . _here the_. Look! I can see at once what letters are
wanting; _th--_ between _there_ and _here_ must be _than_, and then
✠ _here_ is, must be, _where_. So now I have found these letters,