other days half an hour; but now she did not choose to leave the room. She would quit the piano, and, flinging herself into a chair, declare that she wanted to see how Hilda stood it. As Hilda seated herself and wrought out elaborate combinations from the instrument, she would listen attentively, and when it was over she would give expression to some despairing words as to her own stupidity. Yet Gualtier had opportunities, and he was not slow to avail himself of them. Confidential intercourse had arisen between himself and Miss Krieff, and he was determined to avail himself of the great advantage which this gave him. They had a secret in common--she had admitted him to her intimacy. There was an understanding between them. Each felt an interest in the other. Gualtier knew that he was more than an ordinary music-teacher to her. During those days when Zillah persistently staid in the room he made opportunities for himself. Standing behind her at the piano he had chances of speaking words which Zillah could not hear. Thus: "Your fingering there is not correct, Miss Krieff," he would say in a low tone. "You must put the second finger on G. I have not yet deciphered it." "But the book indicates the third finger on G. Have you tried?" "It is a blunder of the printer. Yes, every day--almost every hour of every day." "Yet it seems to me to be natural to put the third finger there. Are you discouraged?" "Try the second finger once or twice, this way;" and he played a few notes. "Discouraged? no; I am willing to keep at it for an indefinite period." "Yes, I see that it is better. You must succeed. I was three months at it before I discovered any thing." "That passage is _allegro_, and you played it _andante_. I wish you would give me a faint hint as to the way in which you deciphered it." "I did not notice the directions," responded Miss Krieff, playing the passage over again. "Will that do? No, I will give no hint. You would only imitate me then, and I wish you to find out for yourself on your own principle." "Yes, that is much better. But I have no principle to start on, and have not yet found out even how to begin." "I must pay more attention to 'expression,' I see. You say my 'time' is correct enough. If you are not discouraged, you will find it out yet." "Your 'time' is perfect. If it is possible, I will find it out. I am not discouraged." "Well, I will hope for something better the next time, and now don't speak about it any more. The 'brat' is listening." "_Allegro_, _allegro_; remember, Miss Krieff. You always confound _andante_ with _allegro_." "So I do. They have the same initials." Such was the nature of Gualtier's musical instructions. These communications, however, were brief and hurried, and only served to deepen the intimacy between them. They had now mutually recognized themselves as two conspirators, and had thus become already indispensable to one another. They waited patiently, however, and at length their patient waiting was rewarded. One day Gualtier came and found that Zillah was unwell, and confined to her room. It was the slightest thing in the world, but the General was anxious and fidgety, and was staying in the room with her trying to amuse her. This Miss Krieff told him with her usual bitterness. "And now," said she, "we will have an hour. I want to know what you have done." "Done! Nothing." "Nothing?" "No, nothing. My genius does not lie in that direction. You might as well have expected me to decipher a Ninevite inscription. I can do nothing." "Have you tried?" "Tried! I assure you that for the last month the only thing that I have thought of has been this. Many reasons have urged me to decipher it, but the chief motive was the hope of bringing to you a complete explanation." "Have you not made out at least a part of it?" "Not a part--not a single word--if there are words in it--which I very much doubt." "Why should you doubt it?" "It seems to me that it must consist of hieroglyphics. You yourself say that you have only made out a part of it, and that you doubt whether it is a valid interpretation. After all, then, your interpretation is only partial--only a conjecture. Now I have not begun to make even a conjecture. For see--what is this?" and Gualtier drew the well-thumbed paper from his pocket. "I have counted up all the different characters here, and find that they are forty in number. They are composed chiefly of astronomical signs; but sixteen of them are the ordinary punctuation marks, such as one sees every day. If it were merely a secret alphabet, there would be twenty-six signs only, not forty. What can one do with forty signs? "I have examined different grammars of foreign languages to see if any of them had forty letters, but among the few books at my command I can find none; and even if it were so, what then? What would be the use of trying to decipher an inscription in Arabic? I thought at one time that perhaps the writer might have adopted the short-hand alphabet, but changed the signs. Yet even when I go from this principle I can do nothing." "Then you give it up altogether?" "Yes, altogether and utterly, so far as I am concerned; but I still am anxious to know what you have deciphered, and how you have deciphered it. I have a hope that I may gain some light from your discovery, and thus be able to do something myself." "Well," said Miss Krieff, "I will tell you, since you have failed so completely. My principle is a simple one; and my deciphering, though only partial, seems to me to be so true, as far as it goes, that I can not imagine how any other result can be found. "I am aware," she continued, "that there are forty different characters in the inscription. I counted them all out, and wrote them out most carefully. I went on the simple principle that the writer had written in English, and that the number of the letters might be disregarded on a first examination. "Then I examined the number of times in which each letter occurred. I found that the sign [Aries image] occurred most frequently. Next was [Gemini image]; next [Taurus image]; and then [Cancer image], and [Leo image], and [Libra image], and [Sagittarius image], and [Mars image]." Miss Krieff marked these signs down as she spoke. Gualtier nodded. "There was this peculiarity about these signs," said Miss Krieff, "that they occurred all through the writing, while the others occurred some in the first half and some in the second. For this inscription is very peculiar in this respect. It is only in the second half that the signs of punctuation occur. The signs of the first half are all astronomical. "You must remember," continued Miss Krieff, "that I did not think of any other language than the English. The idea of its being any dialect of the Hindustani never entered my head. So I went on this foundation, and naturally the first thought that came to me was, what letters are there in English which occur most frequently? It seemed to me if I could find this out I might obtain some key, partially, at any rate, to the letters which occurred so frequently in this writing. "I had plenty of time and unlimited patience. I took a large number of different books, written by standard authors, and counted the letters on several pages of each as they occurred. I think I counted more than two hundred pages in this way. I began with the vowels, and counted up the number of times each one occurred. Then I counted the consonants." "That never occurred to me," said Gualtier. "Why did you not tell me?" "Because I wanted you to decipher it yourself on your own principle. Of what use would it be if you only followed over my track? You would then have come only to my result. But I must tell you the result of my examination. After counting up the recurrence of all the letters on more than two hundred pages of standard authors, I made out an average of the times of their recurrence, and I have the paper here on which I wrote the average down." And Miss Krieff drew from her pocket a paper which she unfolded and showed to Gualtier. On it was the following: AVERAGE OF LETTERS. E. … .222 times per page. N. … .90 times per page. T. … .162 times per page. L. … .62 times per page. A. … .120 times per page. D. … .46 times per page. H. … .110 times per page. C. … .42 times per page. I..J..109 times per page. U..V..36 times per page. S. … .104 times per page. B. … .36 times per page. O. … .100 times per page. W. … .30 times per page. R. … .100 times per page. G. … .30 times per page. "The rest," said Miss Krieff, "occur on the average less than thirty times on a page, and so I did not mark them. 'F,' 'P,' and 'K' may be supposed to occur more frequently than some others; but they do not. "'E,' then," she continued, "is the letter of first importance in the English language. 'A,' and 'T,' and 'H,' are the next ones. Now there are some little words which include these letters, such as 'the.' 'And' is another word which may be discovered and deciphered, it is of such frequent occurrence. If these words only can be found, it is a sign at least that one is on the right track. There are also terminations which seem to me peculiar to the English language; such as 'ng,' 'ing,' 'ed,' 'ly,' and so on. At any rate, from my studies of the Italian, French, and German, and from my knowledge of Hindustani, I know that there are no such terminations in any of the words of those languages. So you see," concluded Miss Krieff, with a quiet smile, "the simple principle on which I acted." "Your genius is marvelously acute!" exclaimed Gualtier, in undisguised admiration. "You speak of your principle as a _simple_ one, but it is more than I have been able to arrive at." "Men," said Miss Krieff, "reason too much. You have been imagining all sorts of languages in
