re true, and didn't believe them. How
could I? Think of the work the man turns out--its quantity, its quality!
He is at once the most brilliant and the most industrious man it has
been my good fortune to meet--and withal the most perfect
gentleman--exquisite in his manners and habits, and the soul of honor.
Did you ever know a man addicted to drink to be so immaculately neat as
he always is? Or so refined in manners and speech? Or so exact in his
dealings? There is no one to whom I would more readily advance money, or
with greater assurance that it will be faithfully repaid in his best,
most painstaking work--to the last penny!"

Dr. Griswold's face took on a look of deep concern.

"The more's the pity--the more's the pity!" said he. "A good man gone
wrong!" Then with a hesitating, somewhat diffident air.

"You say that you need help which I might, perhaps, give?"

Mr. Graham was the energetic business man once more. Dr. Griswold's
visit was most opportune, he said, for while he had on hand a good deal
of "copy" for the next number of the magazine--furnished by Mr. Poe
before his illness--there were one or two important reviews that must be
written and Dr. Griswold would be the very man to write them, if he
would.

As Rufus Griswold seated himself at Edgar Poe's desk a look that was
almost diabolic came into his face. The temporary substitution was but a
step, he told himself, to permanent succession. As editor of the
magazine which under Poe's management had come to dominate thought in
America, he could speak to an audience such as he had not had before.
_He_ could make or mar literary reputations and he could bring the
public to recognize him as a poet!

It so chanced that upon that very day the editor of _Graham's Magazine_
found himself sufficiently recovered from his illness to go out for the
first time. As he fared forth, gaunt and tremulous, the midsummer beauty
of out-of-doors effected him curiously. It seemed strange to him that
the rose on the porch should be so gay, that the sunshine should lie so
golden upon the houses and in the streets of Spring Garden--that birds
should be singing and the whole world going happily on when his heart
held such black despair. As he went on, however, the fresh sweet air
gave him a sense of physical well-being that buoyed his spirits in spite
of the bitterness of his thoughts.

He was going to work again, and he was glad of it--but he made no
resolutions for the future