The first call of the little boy, when he awoke in the morning, was for bread.  He was doubly hungry now.  Thirty-six hours had passed since he had eaten the last mouthful of food that remained in the room.  Mrs. Wentworth on that night of vigils, had determined to make an appeal for help to the man she had purchased the furniture from, on her arrival at Jackson, and in the event of his refusing to assist her, to sell the bed on which her children were wont to sleep.  This determination had not been arrived at without a struggle in the heart of the soldier’s wife.  For the first time in her life she was about to sue for help from a stranger, and the blood rushed to her cheeks, as she thought of the humiliation that poverty entails upon mortal.  It is true, she was not about to ask for charity, as her object was only to procure credit for a small quantity of provisions to feed her children with.  The debt would be paid, she knew well enough, but still it was asking a favor, and the idea of being obligated to a stranger, was galling to her proud and sensitive nature.

“Mother,” exclaimed the child, as he rose from his bed, “it is morning now; aint I going to get some bread?”

“Yes,” she replied, “I will go out to the shop directly and get you some.”

About an hour afterwards she left the room, and bidding Ella to take care Of her brother, while she was absent, bending her steps towards the store of Mr. Swartz.  This gentleman had become, in a few short weeks, possessed of three or four times the wealth he owned when we first introduced him to our readers.  The spirit of speculation had seized him among the vast number of the southern people, who were drawn into its vortex, and created untold suffering among the poorer classes of the people.  The difference with Mr. Swartz and the great majority of southern speculators, was the depth to which he descended for the purpose of making money.  No article of trade, however petty, that he thought himself able to make a few dollars by, was passed aside unnoticed, while he would sell from the paltry amount of a pound of flour to the largest quantity of merchandize required.  Like all persons who are suddenly elevated, from comparative dependence, to wealth, he had become purse proud and ostentatious, as he was humble and cringing before the war.  In this display of the mushroom, could be easily discovered the vulgar and uneducated favorite of frikle fortune.  Even these displays could have been overlooked and pardoned, had he shown any charity to the suffering poor.  But his heart was as hard as the flinty rocks against which wash the billows of the Atlantic.  The cry of hunger never reached the inside of his breast.  It was guarded with a covering of iron, impenetrable to the voice of misery.

And it was to this man that Mrs. Wentworth, in her hour of bitter need applied.  She entered his store and enquired of the clerk for Mr. Swartz.

“You, will find him in that room,” he replied, pointing to a chamber in the rear of the store.