One of the topics most often discussed by critics of Poe has been his exceptional power of “analysis” or “abstract reason.” It is not necessary to do more than remind the student of the persistence of such terms. The most careful writers have employed them. And these terms, if they refer to anything at all more specific than general power of intellect, must refer to an analytic as opposed to a creative power, to a power of solving puzzles, of reasoning from known premises to testable conclusions, where truth is different from error. One of Poe's claims to this power I have scrutinized in a previous article, and it is my purpose now to do the same to another and bolder, the short story called “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”