Now how many [-]'s and <'s do we find in the collection before us?
Ten or more of the first, and six, or about six, of the latter.

Recalling the table made out by Poe--a table I once learned as a necessary part of my schooling as a cipher interpreter--I ran over it thus: e is the one letter most in use in English.

Afterward the succession runs thus a, o, i d, h, n, r, etc.

There being then ten [-]'s to six <'s [-] must be a vowel, and in all probability the vowel e, as no other character in the whole collection, save the plentiful squares, is repeated so often.
I am a patient woman usually, but I was nervous that night, and, perhaps, too deeply interested in the outcome to do myself justice.

I could think of no word with a for one of its three letters which would make sense when added on to It is, Is it, I f it, Is in.
Conscious of no mistake, yet always alive to the possibility of one, I dropped the isolated scrap I was working upon and took up the longer and fuller ones, and with them a fresh line of reasoning.