strangers are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very
particular in knowing tho whys and wherefores about them--whence
they come, what they do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens
had only to preserve his countenance and a due degree of caution,
and the rest was easy. He had no reason to suppose himself an object
of suspicion to anybody; and should he become so, nothing was more
easy than to take his departure with sufficient promptness, and
without unnecessarily soliciting the prayers of the church in behalf
of the hurried traveller! At all events, he could lose nothing by
the visit: perhaps something might be gained.

What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to
ask and to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is
finally over. He has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost,
for the worthy John Cross could not easily be deprived, by any
rivalry, of the loyal regards of his old parishioners. But, though
the latter had most friends, the stranger, Alfred Stevens, had
had most followers. All were anxious to know him--the young, in
particular, maidens and men; and the grave old dames would have
given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have heard him
discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his profound,
devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken
hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and
feeling with but one only--and that one!--

Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a
mere closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he
sees, without much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage,
and tracts of other growing and decaying vegetation, in which his
interest is quite too small to make it needful that he should even