The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-02-09
A Queer VIII.

sor of large fortune in her own right.
the same having been left to her by her
father. She had two sisters, LuciS and
Judith, who had incurred the old gen-
tleman's displeasure by running off
and marrying two scapegraces, and SO
they were not remembered in his will.
One of these sisters had son, Ferentz
Steldl, and the other a daughter.
Lucis .Bridgita O'Birn. When it
happened to Bridgita Molloy to die.
unwedded and without issue, they found
a will under her pillow, which was in the
| strictest sense a conundrum. 1t read
! plainly enough so far as minor requests
were concerned, including thousand
pounds each to the nephew and niece,
and a shilling each to the brothers-in-
law, ''to buy mourning rings;'' but
when 1t came to the bulk of the fortune,
here is what it said:
And all the residue of nv
property, whether real or personal, /
give, bequeath and devise to GPXDN
w M ID YB ID o VI DMIH T l d
ZXZ.
That was all, and. of course, it was
simply nonsense as itstood. But while
they were examining it note dropped
out in which they were told to lift up
the carpet in certain corner of GER
tain room. They did so, and found
there another note, telling them to con-
suit a certain page of a certain book.
They did that also, and found there a
third note, saving: "Key behind
wainscot, three inches toward cupboard
from dressingroom window" 1t
was the work of few moments only
to remove loose board at the point in
Dictated, and there they came upon a
few half eaten scraps of paper, and
nothing more. The mice had swallowed
the key! There could be no doubt that
the whimsical collection of letters was
a good and sufficient cipher, if they
could only get clew to it. The par
ents of Bridgita's nephew felt sure it
could be made to spell his name, and
the parents of the niece were equally
confident that it meant her. As a re-
suit each party brought in an expert
and, strange to tell, each expert solved
the mystery to suit the party that had
employed him, and each was able to
prove the correctness of his reading.
The one retained in the interest of
the nephew began by explaining that a
person like Miss Molloy, presumably
ignorant of cryptography as a science,
would be almost certain to adopt the
device of making one letter do duty for
another. ''Now, you know" he con-
tinued, ''the cOmmonest English letter
is G, so that, ten to one, the commonest
letter in the cipher will represent e.
That letter is Il. 1t comes no fewer than
five times in the twenty-five So, ten
to one, d stands for G. Well, if d
means c, it is likely enough
q would be b, b would be c,
and so on, taking the letters fol-
lowing" Putting c for d and for m,
he went on to show, and assuming that
q might stand for p, b for and for
10, it was easy to spell nepheV. Then
he showed that the cipher and the
"Steldl'' both ended in letter between
pair of letters -zrz: idI. Therefore.
he argued, z would mean and would
mean d. And with SO much deter
mined, it must be clear that the substi-
tuition of letter for letter, and never
mixing them, would give My ded'
1sephelO, 'F'erentz Stetdl. Only there
was a j in .'Ferentz," which should
have been a d to represent an c. But
the lawyer who had drawn up all of the
will but this pcrpleXing clause recol-
lected that Miss Molloy had insisted
upon having the boys name spelled
"Firentz, aud thus the j must stand
for !, and there was special confirmation
of the expert process.
TbaO papna tho 9TH HE
process was quite as convincing, and
even more simple, and yet the outcome
was entirely irreconcilable with that in
the first case. When old women make
ciphers, he explained, as his rival had
done before him, they commonly
change the letters by counting forward
or backward. So he had first counted
one forward, then two, three, four
and finally five-and there he found a
starting-point. According to that rule
q would be !, p would be II, q (making
a follow y would be c. Next came d,
which would be 1, then n, which would
be s, and so on, the true letter being al
ways the fifth letter from the cipher
forward-and the expert smiled as the
cipher was thus found to spell out plain
ly, letter for letter: Lucis Brjdgita
O'Bira, ma niece. There could be no
more cavil over this than over the other
one. The cipher meant two distinct
and opposite things, equally and at the
same time, both demonstrable by pro-
cesses equally obvious and equally
sound. What was to be done? 1t
must 90 to the Chancery Court, GER
tainly; that was the only thing left 10
do. But it never got there. The
nephew and niece met, fell in love and
got married; and thus, after all-may
it not be believed?-the will of Miss
Molloy was finally carried out exactly
as she had planned and desired. =
From Legal Curiosities.
The longevity of medical men is