Distasteful as the new work was to the young poet, he was determined to stick to it, and would probably have done so, but the strict surveillance he soon realized he was under (as if he could not be trusted!) and the manner of Mr. Allan who rarely spoke to him except when it was absolutely necessary, and seemed to regard him as a hopeless criminal, would have been unbearable to a far less proud and sensitive nature than Edgar Poe’s.  Both at the office and at home, Mr. Allan’s narrow, steel-colored eyes seemed to keep constant watch, under their beetling brows, for faults or blunders; and it seemed to the driven boy that no matter what he did or said, he should have done or said just the reverse.  He felt constantly that a storm was brewing which must sooner or later, certainly break, and that night it had burst forth with all the fury of the tempest which has been a long time gathering.

He hardly knew what had brought it on, or how it had begun.  Its violence was so great as to almost stun him until at length, without being more than half conscious of the significance of his own words he had asked if it would not be better for him to go away and earn his own living; and then came his foster-father’s startlingly ready consent, with the warning that if he did go he must look for no further aid from him.

His heart ached for the pretty, tender little mother.  How soft the arms that had clung about his neck, the lips that had pressed his hot brow!  How piteous her dear tears!  They had almost robbed him of his resolution, but he had succeeded in steeling himself against this weakness.  He had folded her close in his arms and kissed her, and vowed that, come what might, he could never forget her or cease to love her, and that he should always think of her as his mother and himself as her child.  Then he had put her gently from him for, for all his vows, she was inseparably bound up in the old life from which he was breaking away—­his life as John Allan’s adopted son—­she could have no real place in his future.

Yet the tie that bound him to her was the strongest in his life and could not be severed without keen pain.  In the world into which he was going to fight the battle of life (he told himself) memory of her would be one of his inspirations.

But where was that battle to be fought, and with what weapons?  He had been brought up as a rich man’s son, and with the expectation of being a rich man’s heir.  He had been trained to no money-making work, physical or mental; and now he was to fare forth into the great world where there was not a familiar face, even, to earn his bread!  What could he do that would bring him the price of a loaf?—­

Did the question appal him?  Not in the least.  He had youth, he had health, he had hope, he had his beloved talent and the secret training he had given himself toward its cultivation.  His “heart-strings were a lute”—­he felt it, and with an optimism rare for him he also felt that he had but to strike upon that lute and the world must needs stop and listen.