replies to him, until the conversations with her became so real that he
half believed they were true.

At night, when bed-time came, he said his prayers at the knee of his
pretty new mother, who told him jolly stories and sang him jolly songs,
and patted him and soothed him with caresses which he found very
agreeable, and accepted graciously. But he always took the miniature
which had been his dying mother's parting gift to bed with him and he
was glad when the new mother kissed him goodnight and put out the light
and softly closed the door behind her; for it was then, with the picture
close against his breast, that the visions came to him--the visions of
angels making sweet music upon golden harps and among them his lost
mother, with her sweet face saddened but made sweeter still by that
thought of nevermore.

Oh, that wondrous word nevermore! Its music charmed him, its
hopelessness filled and thrilled him with a strange, a holy sorrow, in
which there was no pain.

With the lovely vision still about him, the picture still clasped to his
breast, he would sink into healthful sleep to wake on the morrow a
bright, joyous boy, alive to all the pleasures of the new
day--delighting in the beauties of blue sky and sunshine, of whispering
tree and opening flower, ready for sport with his play-fellows and his
pets, and full of all manner of merry pranks and jokes. For in the frame
of this small boy there dwelt two distinct personalities--twin
brothers--yet as utterly unlike as strangers and foreigners, thinking
different thoughts, speaking different languages, and dominating
him--spirit and body--by turns. One of these we will call Edgar
Goodfellow--Edgar the gay, the laughter-loving, the daring, the real,