"In a document so lengthy as the MS. of your friend the Scotch
laird there must of necessity be many repetitions of what may be
called 'indispensable words'--words one or more of which are used
in the composition of almost every long sentence. I allude to such
words as _a_, _an_, _and_, _as_, _of_, _by_, _the_, _their_,
_them_, _these_, _they_, _you_, _I_, _it_, etc. The first thing to
do was to analyse the MS. and classify the different groups of
figures for the purpose of ascertaining the number of repetitions
of any one group. My analysis showed me that these repetitions were
surprisingly few. Forty groups were repeated twice, fifteen three
times, and nine groups four times. Now, according to my
calculation, the MS. contains one thousand two hundred and
eighty-three words. Out of those one thousand two hundred and
eighty-three words there must have been more than the number of
repetitions shown by my analysis, and not of one only, but of
several of what I have called 'indispensable words.' Had a
dictionary been made use of by the writer of the MS. all such
repetitions would have been referred to one particular page, and to
one particular line of that page: that is to say, in every case
where a word repeated itself in the MS. the same group of numbers
would in every case have been its _valeur_. As the repetitions were
so few I could only conclude that some book of an ordinary kind had
been made use of, and that the writer of the cryptogram had been
sufficiently ingenious not to repeat his numbers very frequently in
the case of 'indispensable words,' but had in the majority of cases
given a fresh group of numbers at each repetition of such a word. I
might, perhaps, go further and say that in the majority of cases
where a group of figures is repeated such group refers to some word
less frequently used than any of those specified above, and that
one group was obliged to do duty on two or more occasions, simply