ed over one or
two pages, absorbing each line, and replied in a decided and delighted
voice: "The same man who wrote 'The Raven,' of course--there can't be
any doubt of it. I can hear Mr. Horn's voice in every line. Why didn't
you let me have it before?"

"Are you sure?" asked St. George, watching him closely.

"Am I sure?--of course I am! Listen to this:

"'We grew in age--and--love--together, Roaming the forest and the
wild--'

"That's Kate and me, Uncle George," and he smiled sadly. "And then this
line:

"'I saw no heaven but in her eyes.'

"And then these lines in 'The Raven'--wait--I will read them." He had
the sheet of paper in his pocket which Richard Horn had read from at the
club, and knew the poem now by heart:

"'Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, It
shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels call Lenore'--

"That's me again. I wish I could read it like Mr. Horn. What a voice--so
deep--so musical--like a great organ, or, rather, like one of the big
strings on his violin."

"And what a mind, too, Harry," rejoined St. George. "Richard is a long
way ahead of his time. His head is full of things that few around here
understand. They hear him play the violin or read, and some go away
calling him a genius, but when he talks to them about the way the
railroads are opening up, and the new telegraph this man Morse is
at work on, and what is going to come of it--or hear him discuss the
development of the country along scientific lines, they shrug their
shoulders and tap their foreheads. You want to talk to him every chance
you get. That is one reason I am glad they let you permanently into the
club, for he is too busy in his work-shop at home to speak to anybody.
Nobody will do you so much good--and he likes you, Harry. He said to me
only the other night when I was dining with him--the night you were at
Mrs. Cheston's--that he felt sorry for you; that it was not your fault,
or the fault of your father--but that you both had been caught in the
ebb-tide of a period."

Harry laughed: "What did he mean by that?"

"I'll be hanged if I know. You made so good a guess on the Tamerlane,
that it's just occurred to me to try you on this," and St. George
laughed heartily. (St. George was adrift on the ebb-tide himself did he
but know it.)

Harry thought earnestly for a moment, pondering upon what the inventor
could have had in his mind. It couldn't have been politics that Mr. Horn
m