CHAPTER IV. THE STRANGER. “Erect, morose, determined, solemn, slow— Who knows the man can never cease to know.” CRABBE. “A fearful sign stands in thy house of life— An enemy;—a fiend lurks close behind The radiance of thy planet—oh! be warned!” COLERIDGE. The Rev. John Huss Withers. He had been recommended to the parish as his successor in case of his own demise by Mr. May. He had been a student some twenty years back with the old gentleman—within the last eight or ten years he had had charge of a congregation in one of the Northern cities. Very lately his charge had been resigned—and, in reply to a letter written by Mr. May, inquiring his reason for his resignation, he alleged the cause to be—domestic affliction—the _loss_ of his wife. The old pastor wrote back a letter full of sympathy, and attempted consolation, and then the correspondence was suffered to drop. There was no telling how much the mere circumstance of his given name, “John Huss,” affected the partiality of the old man in his favor. Certainly when he appeared at the grove, there was nothing very winning in his looks. During the funeral ceremonies, Mrs. May and Miss Churchill had scarcely observed him, absorbed as they were in thoughts of the dead. After the return from the burial ground—after Emily and Sophie had laid off their bonnets in Miss Churchill’s room, Emily said— “You must stay with us at least a week or two, Sophie—and we must share together this room that I proposed for you—I will have the crib brought down from the loft and put by the side of our bed for little Hagar. One room _must_ be given up to the use of our boarder, Mr. Withers, and I prefer to let him have mine, for its distressing associations affect my nerves dreadfully.” “Then the new preacher is to board with you, Emily?” “Yes, my love, for many good, _very good_ reasons—first, he was my husband’s friend, and then I am afraid to live here by myself, or I mean without a man about the place; and then the old ladies all tell me that I must receive him because it is so convenient to the church.” For her life, Sophie Churchill could not have explained the cause of the oppression that settled upon her heart, or the deep sigh that revealed the burden on her spirits without throwing it off. They went into the parlor, that was unoccupied, but glittering with its sober, polished steel lustre, and took seats; Emily, in the slate-colored damask easy chair, and Sophie upon the lounge of the same grave hue. By nothing could you have guessed the late presence of so gloomy a visitor as death in that sober but cheerful room.