Hester did not like the stranger’s appearance, but she wondered who he was, and when church was out, and she was walking down the street with her niece who kept the public house, she spoke of him, and learned that he was stopping at the Montauk, as the little hotel was named. He came about noon the previous day, Martha said; had called for their best room, and drank wine with his dinner, and smoked a sight of cigars, and had a brandy sling sent up to him in the evening. She did not remember his name, and she guessed he must have a great deal of money from his appearance. He was going to New York in the night train, and that was all she knew. Hester made no special remark, and as they just then reached the cross-roads where their paths diverged, she bade her niece good-day, and walked on towards Millbank. Meantime, Magdalen was reciting her Sunday-school lesson, and finishing her caraway and lozenges, and telling her companions that she was going away to school by and by, as Mr. Roger wrote she must. The school question did not seem as formidable to-day as yesterday. Miss Nellie Johnson, who represented the first young lady in town, had been to Charlestown Seminary, and so had Mr. Fullerton’s daughters and Lilian Marsh, who was an orphan and an heiress. On the whole, Magdalen had come to think it would set her up a little to go away, and she talked quite complacently about it, and said she guessed it would be to Charlestown, where Miss Johnson had been graduated; but she made no mention of New Haven or Alice Grey, though the latter was in her mind when she sang the closing hymn, and went out of the church into the beautiful sunshine. The day was so fine, and the air so clear, that Magdalen thought to prolong her walk by going round by the graveyard, as she sometimes did on a Sunday. The quiet, shaded spot where Squire Irving was buried just suited her Sunday moods, and she would far rather lie there on the grass, than sit in the kitchen at Millbank, and recite her catechism to Hester or read a sermon to Aleck, whose eyes were growing dim. It would seem that another than herself liked the shadow of the evergreens and the seclusion of Squire Irving’s lot, for as Magdalen drew near the gate, she saw the figure of a man reclining upon the grass, while a feathery ring which curled up among the branches of the trees denoted that he was smoking. Magdalen did not think it just the thing to smoke there among the graves, and the stranger fell a little in her estimation, for it was the stranger, and he arose at once, and bade Magdalen good afternoon, and called her _Miss Rogers_, as if he thought that was her name. “I find this place cooler than my hot room at the Montauk,” he said: and then he spoke of having seen her at church, and asked who had taught her to sing. “Mr. Roger,” she replied. “He used to sing with me before he went away. He has a splendid voice, and is a splendid scholar, too.”