be punished.  But they would not!  They could not—­for they were angels.  They were more—­they were loving women filled with that to which his mind and his soul bowed down and worshipped as reverently as they worshipped God in Heaven—­woman’s love, with its tenderness, its purity, and its unwavering steadfastness.  They would suffer—­that horrible fear, the fear of the Wolf at the door which they had not known in their beloved Spring Garden and since he had been with Graham’s would again rob them of peace.  They would bear it with meek endurance, but they would not be able to hide it from him.  He would see it in the wistful eyes of Virginia and in the patient eyes of “Muddie.”  But they would utter no reproach.  They would soothe him with winning endearments and bid him be of good cheer and would make a gallant fight to show him that they were perfectly happy.

* * * * *

During the year and a half of Edgar Poe’s connection with Graham’s Magazine he had raised the number of subscribers from five thousand to thirty-seven thousand.  His salary, like that he had received from The Messenger, had been a mere pittance for such service as he gave, but also, like what he received from The Messenger it had been a regular income—­a dependence.  With the addition of the little checks paid him for brilliant work in other periodicals, it had amply served, as has been said, to keep the Wolf from the door.  In order to make as much without a regular salary it would be necessary for him to sell a great many articles and that they should be promptly paid for.  And so he wrote, and wrote, and wrote, while “Muddie” took the little rolls of manuscript around and around seeking a market for them.  Her stately figure and saintlike face became familiar at the doors of all the editors and publishers in Philadelphia.

It was a weary business but her strength and courage seemed never to flag.  Sometimes she succeeded in selling a story or a poem promptly and receiving prompt pay.  Then there was joy in the rose-embowered cottage.  Sometimes after placing an article payment was put off time and time again until hope deferred made sick the hearts of all three dwellers in the cottage.

Oftentimes they were miserably poor—­sometimes they were upon the verge of despair—­yet through all there was an undercurrent of happiness that nothing could destroy—­they had each other and even at the worst they still dreamed the dream of the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, even though the heartsease blossom drooped and drooped.

Virginia’s attacks continued to come at intervals, and each time the shadow hung more persistently and with deeper gloom over the cottage.  It would be lifted at length, but not until the husband and mother had suffered again all the agonies of parting—­not until what they believed to be the last goodbyes had been said and the imagination, running ahead of the actual, had gone through each separate detail of death and burial.