Now how many [-]'s and <'s do we find
in the collection before us? Ten or more of the first, and six, or about
six, of the latter. Recalling the table made out by Poe--a table I once
learned as a necessary part of my schooling as a cipher interpreter--I
ran over it thus: e is the one letter most in use in English. Afterward
the succession runs thus a, o, i d, h, n, r, etc. There being then ten
[-]'s to six <'s [-] must be a vowel, and in all probability the vowel
e, as no other character in the whole collection, save the plentiful
squares, is repeated so often.

I am a patient woman usually, but I was nervous that night, and,
perhaps, too deeply interested in the outcome to do myself justice. I
could think of no word with a for one of its three letters which would
make sense when added on to It is, Is it, I f it, Is in.

Conscious of no mistake, yet always alive to the possibility of one, I
dropped the isolated scrap I was working upon and took up the longer and
fuller ones, and with them a fresh line of reasoning. If my argument
so far had been trustworthy, I should find, in these other specimens, a
double [-][-] standing for the double e so frequently found in English.
Did I find such? No. Another shock to my theory.

Should I, then, give it up? Not while another means of verification
remained. The word the should occur more than once in a collection of
words as long as the one before me. If U is really e, I should find
it at the end of the supposed thes. Do I so find it? There are several
words scattered through the whole, of only three letters. Are any of
them terminated by U? Not one. My theory is false, then, and I must
begin all over.

Discarding every previous conclusion save this, that the shading of a
line designated the termination of a word, I hunted first for the
thes. Making a list of the words containing only three letters, I was
confronted by the following:

V [-] <

)L )C C

< L >

^V L V. < C ^V. .>.[-]) )L. .V ).C L.

.<.[-] )7

^V C 7

)L.L >

No two alike. Astonishing! Thirty-two words of English and only one the
in the whole? Could it be that the cipher was in a foreign language?
The preponderance of i's so out of proportion to the other vowels had
already given me this fear, but the lack of thes seemed positively to
indicate it. Yet I must dig deeper before accepting defeat.

Th is a combinati