ons occupied the early part of the month
and when the faculty met upon the 14th., it was found that Edgar Poe
had not only stood well in all of his studies, but in two of them--Latin
and French--he had taken the highest honors.

In spite of this, and of the fact that at no time during the session had
he come under the censure of the faculty, a startling revelation was
made. Edgar Poe, model student as he seemed to be, whose only fault--if
it could be called a fault--as the faculty knew him, had been a tendency
toward a romantic dreaminess that had led him upon lonely rambles among
the hills rather eccentric in a boy of seventeen; Edgar Poe, the quiet,
the gentlemanly, the immaculately neat, the scholarly, the poetic, had
been a spendthrift and a reckless gambler. His debts, for a boy of his
age, were astounding. No one was more amazed at the sum of them than
Edgar himself. He had always had the lordly indifference to money, and
the contempt for keeping account of it, that was the natural result of
being used to have what seemed to him to be an unlimited supply to draw
upon, with the earning of which he had nothing to do. As to hoarding it,
he would as soon have thought of hoarding the air he breathed which came
to him with no less effort. He was, unfortunately, as heedless of what
he owed as what he spent--lavishing it upon his companions as long as it
lasted and when his supply of cash was exhausted running up accounts
with little thought of a day of reckoning--though of course he fully
intended to pay.

His mind was, indeed, too much engrossed with the charming creations of
his brain to leave him time for brooding upon such sordid matters as the
keeping of accounts, or the making of two ends meet. The amount of his
indebtedness was now, however, sufficient to give him a shock which
thoroughly aroused him, and he was genuinely distressed; for he had no
wish to ruthlessly pain his foster-father. The haunting better self not
only arose and confronted him, but remained with him, keeping close step
with him and upbraiding him and condemning him in the whisper audible to
his quick imagination and so terrifying.

Still, the thought that Mr. Allan had plenty of money, and that no
severe sacrifice would be needful for the payment of his debts relieved
his penitence of much of its poignancy. That Mr. Allan would settle
these "debts of honor," as he called them, as the fathers and guardians
of boys as reckless as himself had d