he paid the price he had known all along he would have to pay,
though in the hour of his severest temptation the knowledge had not had
power to make him strong. Neither, in that hour, had he been able to
foresee how hard the price would be. That shadowy, yet very real other
self, his avenging conscience, in whose approval he had so long happily
rested, arose in its wrath and rebuked him as he had never been rebuked
before. It scourged him. It held up before him his bright prospects, his
lately acquired and enviable social position, assuring him as it held
them up, of their insecurity. It pointed with warning finger to the end
of the rainbow and the road leading to it seemed to have suddenly grown
ten times longer and rougher than before.

Finally it held up the images of his two good angels, "Muddie," with her
heart of oak, and her tender, sorrow-stricken face, and Virginia, whose
soft eyes were a heaven of trustful love--whose beauty, whose purity and
innocence, the stored sweets of whose nature were for him alone, and to
whom he was as faultless, as supreme as the sun in heaven.

It was too much. The dejection into which his "blue devils" had cast him
was as nothing to the remorse that overwhelmed him now. On his knees
before Heaven he confessed that his last estate was worse than his
first, and cried aloud for forgiveness for the past and strength for the
future.

In this mood he sat down to write to Mr. Kennedy (who had been absent
upon a summer vacation when he left Baltimore) a letter of
acknowledgment for his benefactions--for whatever The Dreamer was, it is
very certain that he was _not_ ungrateful.

The date he placed at the top of his page was "September 11, 1835."

"I received a letter yesterday," he wrote, "which tells me you are back
in town. I hasten therefore, to write you and express by letter what I
have always found it impossible to express orally--my deep sense of
gratitude for your frequent and effectual assistance and kindness.

"Through your influence Mr. White has been induced to employ me in
assisting him with the editorial duties of his Magazine--at a salary of
$520 per annum."

He had not intended to mention his troubles to Mr. Kennedy, but with
each word he wrote the impulse to unburden himself which he always felt
when talking to this kind, sympathetic man, grew stronger and he found
his pen almost automatically taking an unexpected turn. It was out of
the abundance of his anguished he