“Never.  I used to hear rumors when he was with Billy Burton, but I never saw any indications that they were true, and didn’t believe them.  How could I?  Think of the work the man turns out—­its quantity, its quality!  He is at once the most brilliant and the most industrious man it has been my good fortune to meet—­and withal the most perfect gentleman—­exquisite in his manners and habits, and the soul of honor.  Did you ever know a man addicted to drink to be so immaculately neat as he always is?  Or so refined in manners and speech?  Or so exact in his dealings?  There is no one to whom I would more readily advance money, or with greater assurance that it will be faithfully repaid in his best, most painstaking work—­to the last penny!”

Dr. Griswold’s face took on a look of deep concern.

“The more’s the pity—­the more’s the pity!” said he.  “A good man gone wrong!” Then with a hesitating, somewhat diffident air.

“You say that you need help which I might, perhaps, give?”

Mr. Graham was the energetic business man once more.  Dr. Griswold’s visit was most opportune, he said, for while he had on hand a good deal of “copy” for the next number of the magazine—­furnished by Mr. Poe before his illness—­there were one or two important reviews that must be written and Dr. Griswold would be the very man to write them, if he would.

As Rufus Griswold seated himself at Edgar Poe’s desk a look that was almost diabolic came into his face.  The temporary substitution was but a step, he told himself, to permanent succession.  As editor of the magazine which under Poe’s management had come to dominate thought in America, he could speak to an audience such as he had not had before. He could make or mar literary reputations and he could bring the public to recognize him as a poet!

It so chanced that upon that very day the editor of Graham’s Magazine found himself sufficiently recovered from his illness to go out for the first time.  As he fared forth, gaunt and tremulous, the midsummer beauty of out-of-doors effected him curiously.  It seemed strange to him that the rose on the porch should be so gay, that the sunshine should lie so golden upon the houses and in the streets of Spring Garden—­that birds should be singing and the whole world going happily on when his heart held such black despair.  As he went on, however, the fresh sweet air gave him a sense of physical well-being that buoyed his spirits in spite of the bitterness of his thoughts.

He was going to work again, and he was glad of it—­but he made no resolutions for the future.  In the past when he had fallen and had braced himself up again, he had sworn to himself that he would be strong thereafter—­that he would never, never yield to the temptation to touch wine again.  But he had not been strong.  And now he looked the deplorable truth straight in the face.  He hoped with all his soul that he would not fall again.  He would give everything he possessed to ensure himself from yielding to the temptation to taste the wild exhilaration—­the freedom—­the forgetfulness—­to say to the cup “Nevermore”—­to ensure himself from having to pay the price of his yielding in the agony of remorse that was a descent into hell.