“All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss Cooper may be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget that it all depends upon the young lady herself whether either of them is to have a right at all in her concerns.” “Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when there's other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger should ride off once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as if he was starting on a journey--should be gone half a day--then come back with his nag all in a foam, and after that you should see him in some new cravat, or waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as if he had gone home and got a change?” “And does he do that?” inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of curiosity. “That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it seems--so Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small sort of divinity on earth--that the day before, he's busy writing letters, and, according to her account, pretty long letters too. Well, nobody sees that he ever gets any letters in return. He never asks at the post-office, so Jacob Zandts himself tells me, and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has any friends or relations anywhere else.” Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars which his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the stranger; and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious. Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley was silenced not satisfied. “There's something wrong about it,” he muttered to himself on leaving the old man, “and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of it, or there's no taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I feel it if I don't know it, and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off, I must. One or t'other must do it, that's certain.” With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process by which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback; and going at a moderate gallop along the high-road to the country. Stevens bowed to him and drew up for speech as he drew nigh. At first Ned Hinkley appeared disposed to avoid him, but moved by a sudden notion, he stopped and suffered himself to speak with something more of civility than he had hitherto shown to the same suspected personage. “Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens,” said he--“you're not going to leave us, are you?”