ooner," continued the magistrate, "I
might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which
extends from my occiput to my sinciput."

"But, sir," asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which he
had hitherto rested, "what do you mean by a cipher?"

"Tell me a number."

"Any number you like."

"Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better."

Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a
pencil, and said:

"Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that
comes; for instance:

_Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind._

I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get:

_Judgejarriquezhasaningeniousmind._

"That done," said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain
a proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face,
"suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic form
to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is composed
of three ciphers, and let these ciphers be 2, 3, and 4. Now on the line
below I put the number 234, and repeat it as many times as are necessary
to get to the end of the phrase, and so that every cipher comes
underneath a letter. This is what we get:

_J u d g e j a r r I q u e z h a s a n I n g e n I o u s m I n d_ 2 3 4
2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 And now,
Mr. Manoel, replacing each letter by the letter in advance of it in
alphabetical order according to the value of the cipher, we get:

_j_ + 2 = _l_
_u_ + 3 = _x_
_d_ + 4 = _h_
_g_ + 2 = _i_
_e_ + 3 = _h_
_j_ + 4 = _n_
_a_ + 2 = _c_
_r_ + 3 = _u_
_r_ + 4 = _v_
_i_ + 2 = _k_
_q_ + 3 = _t_
_u_ + 4 = _y_
_e_ + 2 = _g_
_a_ + 3 = _c_
_h_ + 4 = _t_
_a_ + 2 = _c_
_s_ + 3 = _v_
_a_ + 4 = _e_
_n_ + 2 = _p_
_i_ + 3 = _l_
_n_ +