The Russellville Democrat., 1885-10-29
A Oneer Will.


 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 of and marrying two scapegraces, and so they were not remembered in his will. One of these sisters had son, Ferentz Steldl, and the other g daughter, Lucis Bridgita O'Birn When it happened to Bridgita Molloy to die, unweddcd and without issue, they found will under her pillow, which was in the strictest sense q conundrum. It read plainly enough so far as minor bcquests were concerned, including thousand pounds each to the nephew and niece, and shilling each to the brothers-in- law, ito buy mourning rings" but when it came to the bulk of the fortune, here is what it said
 And all the residue of my property, whether real or personal, l give. bequeath and devise to G P KID N W NJ D YB DOVJ w D M H T I 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 a cer- tain room. They did so, and found there another note, telling them to con suit. a certain page of certain book. They did that also, and found there q third note, saying: "Key behind wainscot, three inches toward cupboard from dressing-room window" 1t was the work of few moments only to remove a loose board at the point in dicated, 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 1t 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 science. would be almost certain to adopt the device of making one letter do duty for another. ''Now, you know" he con tinued, s''the commonest English letter is e, so that, ten to one, the commonest letter in the cipher will represent c. That letter is d It comes no fewer than five times in the twenty-five. So, ten to one, q stands for c. Well, if q means c, it is likely enough q would be Q, would be C. and so on, taking the letters fol- lowing" Putting for q aed p for nl, he went on to show, and assuming that 2 might stand for p, b for h and for 70, it was easy to spell nepheU. Then he showed that the cipher and the '.Steldl'' both ended in letter between pair of letters ZEE: ldl. Therefore, he argued, 2 would mean and T would mean q. 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 dear nephei0, Fereaatz iStetdi. Only there was ] in 'F'erentz, which should have been q to represent an c. But the lawyer who had drawn up all of the will but this perplexing clause recol- lected that Miss Molloy had insisted upon having the boys name spelled "Firentz," and thus the j must stand for |, and there was special confirmation of the experts process.
 Then came the other expert. His 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 . would be {, D would be t, 2 (making follow S) would be c. Next came q, which would be [, then p, which would be 8, and SO on, the true letter being al- ways the fifth letter from the cipher forward the expert smiled as the cipher was thus found to spell out plain ly. letter for letter: Lucis Bridgita 0'Bun, mg 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 demonstrahle by pro cesses equally obvious and equally sound. What was to be done9 It must go to the Chancery Court, cer- tainly; that was the only thing left to 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 will of Miss Molloy was finally carried out exactly as she had planned and desired. = From Legal Curiosities.
 The longevity of medical men is well illustrated by some figures in the London Laacek. The year now drawing