<i>mmessunkaSenrA.icefdoK.segnittamurtn ecertserrette,rotaivsadua,ednecsedsadne lacartniiilrJsiratracSarbmutabiledmek meretarcsilucoYsleffenSnI.</i> I could scarcely keep from laughing, while my uncle, on the contrary, got in a towering passion, struck the table with his fist, darted out of the room, out of the house, and then taking to his heels was presently lost to sight. CHAPTER 3 AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY "What is the matter?" cried the cook, entering the room; "when will master have his dinner?" "Never." "And, his supper?" "I don't know. He says he will eat no more, neither shall I. My uncle has determined to fast and make me fast until he makes out this abominable inscription," I replied. "You will be starved to death," she said. I was very much of the same opinion, but not liking to say so, sent her away, and began some of my usual work of classification. But try as I might, nothing could keep me from thinking alternately of the stupid manuscript and of the pretty Gretchen. Several times I thought of going out, but my uncle would have been angry at my absence. At the end of an hour, my allotted task was done. How to pass the time? I began by lighting my pipe. Like all other students, I delighted in tobacco; and, seating myself in the great armchair, I began to think. Where was my uncle? I could easily imagine him tearing along some solitary road, gesticulating, talking to himself, cutting the air with his cane, and still thinking of the absurd bit of hieroglyphics. Would he hit upon some clue? Would he come home in better humor? While these thoughts were passing through my brain, I mechanically took up the execrable puzzle and tried every imaginable way of grouping the letters. I put them together by twos, by threes, fours, and fives--in vain. Nothing intelligible came out, except that the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth made <i>ice</i> in English; the eighty-fourth, eighty-fifth, and eighty-sixth, the word <i>sir</i>; then at last I seemed to find the Latin words <i>rota, mutabile, ira, nec, atra</i>. "Ha! there seems to be some truth in my uncle's notion," thought I. Then again I seemed to find the word <i>luco</i>, which means sacred wood. Then in the third line I appeared to make out <i>labiled</i>, a perfect Hebrew word, and at the last the syllables mere, are, mer, which were French. It was enough to drive one mad. Four different idioms in this absurd phrase. What connection could there be between ice, sir, anger, cruel, sacred wood, changing, mother, are, and sea? The first and the last might, in a sentence connected with Iceland, mean sea of ice. But what of the rest of this monstrous cryptograph?