Edgar’s heart stood still.  “Was Nat Howard talking about him?”

The voice went on:  “I grant you the fellow’s smart enough and game enough, but he’s not in our class, and I, for one, won’t associate with him intimately.”

“His family’s one of the oldest and most honorable in the country,” said Robert Stanard.  “I’ve heard my father say so.”

“Yes, but his father must have been a black sheep to run away with a common actress—­”

The harangue was brought to an abrupt end.  The enraged Edgar had sprung forward and, with a blow in the face, struck Nat Howard down.  Nat’s friends were lifting him up and wiping the blood from his face and dusting his clothing, while Edgar’s own friends gathered around him as if to restrain him from repeating the attack.  He shook them off, gazing with contempt upon his limp and half-stunned adversary.

“I’ll not hit him again until he repeats his offence,” he assured the boys, “but I want him and all other cowardly dogs to know what’s waiting for them when they insult the memory of my father and mother.  Yes! my mother was an actress!  God gave her the gifts to make her one and she had the pluck to use them to earn bread for herself and for her children.  Yes! she was an actress!  She had the lovely face and form, the high intelligence and the poetic soul for the making of a perfect woman or for the interpreter of genius—­for the personification of a Juliet, a Rosalind or a Cordelia.  Yes! she was an actress!  And I’m proud of it as surely as I’m proud she’s an angel in Heaven!  And I’m proud that my father—­the son of a proud family—­had the spirit, for her sweet sake, to fly in the face of convention, to count family, fortune and all well lost to become her husband, and to adopt her profession; to learn of her, in order that he might be always at her side to protect her and to live in the light of her presence.  If I had choice of all the surnames and of all the lineage in the world, I would still choose the name of Poe, and to be the son of David and Elizabeth Poe, players!”

The boys were silent.  The school bell was ringing and Edgar Poe, still pale and trembling with passion, turned on his heel and strode, with head up, in the direction of the door.  Rob Stanard and Rob Sully walked one on each side of him, while Dick Ambler and Jack Preston and several others among his adherents, followed close.  A little way behind the group came the other boys, their still half-dazed leader in their midst.  Good Mr. Burke (who had succeeded Mr. Clarke as school-master) guessed as they came in and took their seats that there had been an altercation of some kind, and that his two brag scholars had been prominent in it; but he was wise in his generation and allowed the boys to settle their own differences without asking any questions unless he were appealed to, when his sympathy and interest were found to be theirs to count upon.

The afternoon session was unsatisfactory, but the master was in an indulgent mood and apparently did not notice what each boy felt—­a confusion and abstraction.  There was a palpable sense of relief when the closing hour came.