"That give us--nothing!"
And in fact the _h_ placed under the _r_ could not be expressed by a
cipher, for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier
position to that of the _r._
The _p,_ the _y,_ the _j,_ arranged beneath the letters _o, t, e,_
disclosed the cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the _s_ and the _l_ at the
end of the word, the interval which separated them from the _g_ and
the _a_ was a dozen letters, and hence impossible to express by a
single cipher, so that they corresponded to neither _g_ nor _a_.
And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries
of despair.
Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge
could hinder him.
The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed man
was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to the
spot where the gallows had been erected.
Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of
the document with a fixed stare.
"The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the last
letters!"
It was the last hope.
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