in his
weakness he felt a peace and happiness such as he had rarely tasted.
This frugal but restful home in which he found himself, with the
ministrations of "Muddie" and "Sissy," as he playfully called his aunt
and the little cousin who had adopted him as her "Buddie," were to him,
after his struggle with hunger, fever and death, like a safe harbor to a
storm-tossed sailor.

The little Virginia claimed him as her own from the beginning. As long
as he was weak enough to need to be waited upon her small feet and hands
never wearied in his service but as he grew better, it was he who served
her. There never were such stories as he could tell, such games as he
could play, and he took her cat to his heart with gratifying promptness.
When they walked out together the world seemed turned into a fairyland
as with her hand held fast in his he told her wonderful secrets about
the clouds, the trees, the flowers, the birds and even about the stones
under her feet. It was fascinating to her too, to lie and listen to him
read and talk with "Muddie." She was not wise enough to understand much
that they said, but at night, when she had been tucked into bed, he
would sit under the lamp and read aloud from one of the books in the
shelves, or from the long strips of paper upon which he wrote and wrote;
and though she did not understand the words, she delighted to listen,
for his voice made the sweetest lullaby music.

With the return of health and strength, energy and the impulse for
life's battle began to return to Edgar Poe, and with them a new
incentive. He began to awaken to the fact that "Muddie" and "Sissy" were
poor and that his presence in their home was making them poorer--that
the struggle to support this modest establishment was a severe one, and
that he must arise and add what he could to the earnings of the deft
needle. The three little editions of his poems had brought him no
money--he had begun to despair of their ever bringing him any. He had
sometime since turned his attention to prose but the manuscripts of such
stories as he had offered the publishers had come back to him with
unflattering promptness. He began now, however, with fresh heart to
write and to arrange a number of those that seemed to him to be his
best, for a book, to which he proposed to give the title, "Tales of the
Folio Club."

But the new tide of hope was soon at a low ebb. The editors and
publishers would have none of his work.

When the repeat