Again Mr. Kennedy’s voice rang out: 

“Any one of your stories, Mr. Poe—­we leave it to you.”

Everybody was seated now, with eyes fixed on the poet.  Harry, overcome and still dazed, pressed close to Richard, who, bending forward, had put his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand.  Clayton wheeled up a big chair and placed it back some little distance so that he could get a better view of the man.  Seymour, Latrobe, and the others canted their seats to face the speaker squarely.  All felt that Kennedy’s tact had saved the situation and restored the equilibrium.  It was the poet now who stood before them—­the man of genius—­the man whose name was known the country through.  That he was drunk was only part of the performance.  Booth had been drunk when he chased a super from the stage; Webster made his best speeches when he was half-seas-over—­was making them at that very moment.  It was so with many other men of genius the world over.  If they could hear one of Poe’s poems—­or, better still, one of his short stories, like “The Black Cat” or the “Murders in the Rue Morgue”—­it would be like hearing Emerson read one of his Essays or Longfellow recite his “Hyperion.”  This in itself would atone for everything.  Kennedy was right—­it would be one of the rare treats of their lives.

Poe grasped the back of the chair reserved for him, stood swaying for an instant, passed one hand nervously across his forehead, brushed back a stray lock that had fallen over his eyebrow, loosened the top button of his frock coat, revealing a fresh white scarf tied about his neck, closed his eyes, and in a voice deep, sonorous, choked with tears one moment, ringing clear the next—­word by word—­slowly—­with infinite tenderness and infinite dignity and with the solemnity of a condemned man awaiting death—­repeated the Lord’s Prayer to the end.

Kennedy sat as if paralyzed.  Richard Horn, who had lifted up his hands in horror as the opening sentence reached his ears, lowered his head upon his chest as he would in church.  There was no blasphemy in this!  It was the wail of a lost soul pleading for mercy!

Harry, cowering in his chair, gazed at Poe in amazement.  Then a throb of such sympathy as he had never felt before shook him to his depths.  Could that transfigured man praying there, the undried tears still on his lids, be the same who had entered on his uncle’s arm but a few moments before?

Poe lifted his head, opened his eyes, walked in a tired, hopeless way toward the mantel and sank into an easy-chair.  There he sat with bowed head, his face in his hands.

One by one the men rose to their feet and, with a nod or silent pressure of St. George’s palm, moved toward the door.  When they spoke to each other it was in whispers:  to Todd, who brought their hats and canes; to Harry, whom, unconsciously, they substituted for host; shaking his hand, muttering some word of sympathy for St. George.  No—­they would find their way, better not disturb his uncle, etc.  They would see him in the morning, etc., and thus the group passed out in a body and left the house.