He took up one of the rejected manuscripts in his hand: it was a legendary poem, modeled something after the style of Byron, though the young author would have violently denied the resemblance. He thought of the pains he had bestowed on it--of the amount of thought and dreams--the sick, languid headaches, the pained breast, the weary mind it had so often occasioned him; then he saw the marks of tears on it--the gush of tears which had come as if to extinguish the fire of madness which had kindled in his brain. When he saw that manuscript returned to him, the marks of the tears were there staining the outside page. He looked fixedly on that manuscript, and his thin face became darker, and more expressive of all that is hopeless in human sorrow; the bright light of success shone as if so far away from him now--away at an endless distance, which neither his strength of body or mind could ever carry him over. At that moment the sharp, rapid knock of the postman sounded in his ears. His heart leaped up, and then suddenly sank with suffocating fear, for the dark mood of despair was on him--could it be another returned manuscript? He had only one now in the hands of a publisher; the one on which he had expended all his powers--the one to which he had trusted most: it was a tragedy. He had dreamed the preceding night that it had been accepted; he had dreamed it had brought him showers of gold; he had been for a moment happy beyond the bounds of human happiness, though he had awoke with a sense of horror on his mind, he knew not why. The publisher to whom he had sent his tragedy was to present it to the manager of one of the London theatres. Had it been taken, performed, successful?--a dream of glory, as if heaven had opened on him, bewildered his senses. The door was rudely pushed open; his mother entered, and flung the manuscript of the returned tragedy on the table. "There--there's another of them!" she cried, rage choked her voice for a moment. Andrew was stunned. Despair seemed to have frozen him all at once into a statue. He mechanically took up the packet, and, opening it, he read the cold, polite, brief note, which told of the rejection of his play both by theatres and publishers. "Idiot--fool--scribbling fool!" The unfortunate poet's mother sank into a chair, as if unable to support the force of her anger. "Fool!--scribbling madman! will ye never give over?" Andrew made no answer; but every one of his mother's furious words sank into his brain, adding to the force of his unutterable misery. "Will ye go now, and take to some other trade, will ye?--will ye, I say?" Andrew's lips moved for a moment, but no sound came from them. "Will ye go out, and make money, I say, at some sensible work? Make money for me, will you? I'll force you out to make money at some work by which there's money to be made; not the like of that idiot writing of yours, curse it. Answer me, and tell me you'll go out and work for money now?"