ing invention? I believe the cryptograph to
have a profound meaning--which I must make out."

My uncle walked about the room in a state of excitement almost
impossible to describe.

"It may be so, sir," I timidly observed, "but why conceal it from
posterity, if it be a useful, a worthy discovery?"

"Why--how should I know? Did not Galileo make a secret of his
discoveries in connection with Saturn? But we shall see. Until I
discover the meaning of this sentence I will neither eat nor sleep."

"My dear uncle--" I began.

"Nor you neither," he added.

It was lucky I had taken double allowance that day.

"In the first place," he continued, "there must be a clue to the
meaning. If we could find that, the rest would be easy enough."

I began seriously to reflect. The prospect of going without food and
sleep was not a promising one, so I determined to do my best to solve
the mystery. My uncle, meanwhile, went on with his soliloquy.

"The way to discover it is easy enough. In this document there are one
hundred and thirty-two letters, giving seventy-nine consonants to
fifty-three vowels. This is about the proportion found in most southern
languages, the idioms of the north being much more rich in consonants.
We may confidently predict, therefore, that we have to deal with a
southern dialect."

Nothing could be more logical.

"Now," said Professor Hardwigg, "to trace the particular language."

"As Shakespeare says, 'that is the question,"' was my rather satirical
reply.

"This man Saknussemm," he continued, "was a very learned man: now as he
did not write in the language of his birthplace, he probably, like most
learned men of the sixteenth century, wrote in Latin. If, however, I
prove wrong in this guess, we must try Spanish, French, Italian, Greek,
and even Hebrew. My own opinion, though, is decidedly in favor of
Latin."

This proposition startled me. Latin was my favorite study, and it seemed
sacrilege to believe this gibberish to belong to the country of Virgil.

"Barbarous Latin, in all probability," continued my uncle, "but still
Latin."

"Very probably," I replied, not to contradict him.

"Let us see into the matter," continued my uncle; "here you see we have
a series of one hundred and thirty-two letters, apparently thrown
pell-mell upon paper, without method or organization. There are words
which are composed wholly of consonants, such as <i>mm.rnlls</i>, others
which are nearly all vowels, the fif