I was about to reply when he stopped me.

 

"Sit down," he said, quite fiercely, "and write to my dictation."

 

I obeyed.

 

"I will substitute," he said, "a letter of our alphabet for that of the Runic: we will then see what that will produce. Now, begin and make no mistakes."

 

The dictation commenced with the following incomprehensible result:

 

 

mm.rnlls esruel seecJde

sgtssmf unteief niedrke

kt,samn atrateS Saodrrn

emtnaeI nuaect  rrilSa

Atvaar  .nscrc  ieaabs

ccdrmi  eeutul  frantu

dt,iac  oseibo  KediiY

 

Scarcely giving me time to finish, my uncle snatched the document from my hands and examined it with the most rapt and deep attention.

 

"I should like to know what it means," he said, after a long period.

 

I certainly could not tell him, nor did he expect me to—his conversation being uniformly answered by himself.

 

"I declare it puts me in mind of a cryptograph," he cried, "unless, indeed, the letters have been written without any real meaning; and yet why take so much trouble? Who knows but I may be on the verge¹ of some great discovery?"

 

My candid² opinion was that it was all rubbish! But this opinion I kept carefully to myself, as my uncle's choler was not pleasant to bear. All this time he was comparing the book with the parchment.

 

"The manuscript volume and the smaller document are written in different hands," he said, "the cryptograph is of much later date than the book; there is an undoubted proof of the correctness of my surmise³. [An irrefragable proof I took it to be.] The first letter is a double M, which was only added to the Icelandic language in the twelfth century—this makes the parchment two hundred years posterior to the volume."

 

The circumstances appeared very probable and very logical, but it was all surmise to me.

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