Your loving brother, "Revis Lane." I had often heard my father speak of my uncle Revis, who went to America almost twenty years before I was born.

Now he was my nearest living relative.

No news of him had reached us for many years before my father died.

I was familiar with his handwriting and the specimen before me was either genuine, or remarkably like it.

If genuine he had evidently not heard of my father's death.
Extraordinary as the message was, the messenger was more so.