“Mrs. Grey,” he said, “here is all the money I have in the world, ten dollars in greenbacks. Take half of it--I wish you would--it wouldn’t inconvenience me at all. I will make some more soon, and then I will divide with you again until Dan comes home.” I could hardly speak for tears. At that moment I was richer than my general. I had at home in gold and greenbacks more money than General Lee. “God bless you, general!” I managed to say. “But really I don’t need it. If I do really and truly I will come to you for it.” Franklin Street wasn’t a good place to cry in, so I hurried home. Still the days that passed did not bring me Dan. I became thoroughly miserable. I sat in my window and watched and was cross if anybody spoke to me. One day a servant brought up a message: “Er gent’man in de parlor to see yer, missy.” “What sort of a ‘gent’man’ is it?” I asked tartly. There was but one man in the world I wanted to see or hear about just then. “He ain’t lak our people, missy. He’s furrin--French or suppin nuther. He say how he usen ter know yer in Petersburg. An’ how you lent ’im some--er--music--er suppin lak dat. An’ he got--er--errah--suppin--I clar fo’ de Lord, missy, I dunno what ’tis--but he got suppin----” “Oh, I know,” I said. “He’s that old French music-teacher, and he’s brought back that old music I lent him in the year one. Go tell him that I don’t want it; he can have it.” Jake departed only to return in a more perplexed frame of mind and state of speech. “He say how ’tain’t no music he’s got fur yer. He say--he do say, missy--but de Lord knows I dunno what he say!--but anyway be bleeged to see yer.” I got up and went down to the parlor in desperation. Sure enough, it was the little French music-teacher, and he began apologies, acknowledgments and what not in his dreadful English. “Madame, I haf no mooseek to you--not at all. I haf one message of you to ze majaire. If you not b’lief me,” he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a dirty bit of paper, “look at ze cart--vat sail I call him? ze lettaire. If madame vill look--I beg ze pardon of madame----” I snatched the paper out of his hand. And then--I couldn’t make it out. Written in the first place with an indifferent pencil on a worn bit of the poor paper of that day and carried in the little Frenchman’s very ragged and grimy pocket, the scrawl was illegible. It had never been more than a line of some five or six words. While I was trying to make it out the little Frenchman explained that it was merely a line introducing himself as the bearer of a message.