And yet it must not be thought that the outcast spent his time in sheer idleness.  St. George would often find him tucked away in one of his big chairs devouring some book he had culled from the old general’s library in the basement—­a room adjoining the one occupied by a firm of young lawyers—­Pawson & Pawson (only one brother was alive)—­with an entrance on the side street, it being of “no use to me” St. George had said—­“and the rent will come in handy.”  Tales of the sea especially delighted the young fellow—­the old admiral’s blood being again in evidence—­and so might have been the mother’s fine imagination.  It was Defoe and Mungo Park and Cooke who enchained the boy’s attention, as well as many of the chronicles of the later navigators.  But of the current literature of the day—­Longfellow, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, and Emerson—­no one appealed to him as did the man Poe.  He and St. George had passed many an hour discussing him.  Somehow the bond of sympathy between himself and the poet had become the stronger.  Both had wept bitter tears over the calamities that had followed an unrequited love.

It was during one of these talks—­and the poet was often under discussion—­that St. George had suddenly risen from his chair, lighted a candle, and had betaken himself to the basement—­a place he seldom visited—­from which he brought back a thin, crudely bound, and badly printed, dust-covered volume bearing the title “Tamerlane:—­by a Bostonian.”  This, with a smile he handed to Harry.  Some friend had given him the little book when it was first published and he had forgotten it was in the house until he noted Harry’s interest in the author.  Then again, he wanted to see whether it was the boy’s literary taste, never much in evidence, or his romantic conception of the much-talked-of poet, which had prompted his intense interest in the man.

“Read these poems, Harry, and tell me who wrote them,” said St. George, dusting the book with a thrash of his handkerchief and tossing it to the young fellow.

The boy caught it, skimmed through the thin volume, lingered over one or two pages, absorbing each line, and replied in a decided and delighted voice:  “The same man who wrote ‘The Raven,’ of course—­there can’t be any doubt of it.  I can hear Mr. Horn’s voice in every line.  Why didn’t you let me have it before?”

“Are you sure?” asked St. George, watching him closely.

“Am I sure?—­of course I am!  Listen to this: 

“’We grew in age—­and—­love—­together, Roaming the forest and the wild—­’

“That’s Kate and me, Uncle George,” and he smiled sadly.  “And then this line: 

“‘I saw no heaven but in her eyes.’

“And then these lines in ’The Raven’—­wait—­I will read them.”  He had the sheet of paper in his pocket which Richard Horn had read from at the club, and knew the poem now by heart: 

“’Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels call Lenore’—­