ven try to collect his thoughts. Then he sat down at his
window and looked out over the fragrant garden to the quiet sky,
contemplation of which had so often soothed his spirit, and tried to
readjust the inner world he lived in, in accordance with the discovery
he had just made. A first such readjustment his world had experienced
three years before, when Mr. Allan had taunted him with his dependence
upon charity. Before that time the world, as he knew it, had held only
love and beauty--sorrow, as he had seen it, being but a solemn and
poetic form of beauty. The change in such a world made by the discovery
that his being an adopted son set him apart in a class different from
other boys--a class unlovely and loveless--had been great, had stolen
much of the joy from living; but he was very young then, and the joy of
mere living and breathing was strong in his blood, and he had gradually
become accustomed--hardened, if you will--to the idea of his dependence
upon charity.

But here was a change far more terrible, and coming at a time when he
was old enough to feel it far more keenly. He was indeed, in a class by
himself--he was held in contempt because of what his angel mother had
been! His holy of holies had been profaned, the sacred fire that warmed
his inner life had been spat upon. It seemed he had been from the
beginning despised, though he had not dreamed it, for that which he held
most dear--of which he was most proud. The little, aristocratic,
puffed-up world he lived in would doubtless always despise him; but that
was because of its narrowness and ignorance for which he, in turn, would
despise it. With the whimsical, half-belief he had always had that the
dead remain conscious through their long sleep, he wondered if his
beautiful young mother, with the roses on her hair, down under the green
earth, was not aware of the love and loyalty of her boy and if her
spirit soaring the highest heavens, would not aid him in carrying out
the resolution which in the bitterness of his soul, he then and there
made--the resolution to bring this mean little, puffed up world to do
honor to his name--to her name, of which he was prouder in this hour
when others would trample it in the dust than he had ever been before.

Young boy though he was, he was conscious of his God-given endowments.
He felt that the divine fire of poetic feeling in his breast was an
immortal thing. Up to this time, his singing had been as the singing of
a wo