od-bird--an impulse, a necessity to express the thoughts and
feelings of his heart. He had never looked far enough ahead to consider
whether he should or should not publish his work; but now ambition
awoke--full-grown at its birth--and set him afire. From those parents
whose memory had been insulted he had received (God willing it) the
precious heritage of brilliant intellect. He would put the work of this
intellect--his stories and his poems--into books. He would give them to
the wide world. He would win recognition for the name of Poe.

He drew from within his coat the miniature of his mother--her dying
gift. He gazed upon it long and tenderly, and with it still exposed to
view brought from his desk the little packet of yellowed letters in
their faded blue ribbon. He knew them by heart, but he read them--each
one--over again, as carefully as if it had been the first time. They
were not many and those not long; but ah, they were sweet!--those
tender, quaint love-letters that had passed between his parents in their
brief courtship and married life. His father's so manly so strong--like
the letters of a soldier. His mother's so modest, so tender. They did
not stir his pulses so wildly now as they did upon his first reading of
them, when a little lad at old Stoke-Newington--but they were no less
beautiful to him now than then. The sentences made him think of the
dainty, sweet aroma of pressed roses.

He tied the packet up again and kissed letters and picture, as if to
seal the promise he was making them, then restored them to their
hiding-places. With the bitter knowledge that had come to him, he felt
that years had passed over him--that he would never be young again--this
boy of fourteen!

He raised his deep, pensive eyes once more to the quiet sky and his
spirit cried to Heaven to grant him power to accomplish this task he had
set himself: to lift the loved name of his parents from the dust where
it lay, and to set it high in the temple of fame, wreathed with immortal
myrtle.

His resolution gave to his poetic face and his slender figure an air of
mastery, as though some new, high quality had been born within him.

CHAPTER VIII.

In the days that followed, Edgar's friends found him unusually silent,
yet not morose. Serenity sat on his broad, thoughtful brow and in his
great, soft eyes. Nat Howard and his chums gave him the cold shoulder
and wore, in his presence, the air of offended dignity which the
smal