“Cumbo, will you be kind enough to go down to Mr. Withers, and tell him that I am sick—_very_ sick—and ask him to excuse my absence!” “An’ nuff to make you! an’ nuff to make you! I’m sick myself; I did hope to see that gran’ rascal hang. I did _that_, and now jes see what a ’spointment.” And the old woman hobbled away, and soon she heard her visitors leave the house, speaking their regret and sympathy as they went. Old Cumbo came up, and spreading a pallet near her young mistress’s bed, lay down to sleep, or rather to talk. CHAPTER V. THE PHILOSOPHER. “Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis of the voyage of Life.” RAMSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. The next morning early Emily May was over at the hall. She rode her own saddle-horse and little Gusty rode another, behind which was fixed a pillion, upon which Sophie was to return to the Grove—at least, so said Mrs. May, for she persisted that Heath Hall was neither a safe nor a proper place of residence for Miss Churchill. But neither coaxing threats nor arguments would have prevailed with Sophie to leave the Heath—her antipathy to Emily’s boarder was undiminished. Emily spent the day with her, and at nightfall left, disappointed. That evening, after the beldam and the infant were asleep, Sophie as usual sat alone in her large old parlor. She felt a sense of security and peace, and plied her knitting-needles diligently—her thoughts occupied with no heavier matter than the heeling and toeing of little Hagar’s red worsted stockings, or at most, the well-being of her cow and calf, or her vegetable garden, for already upon the maiden had descended matronly cares. She sat there knitting, and presently a rap—a calm, self-possessed rap was heard at the hall door; she glanced at the old clock in the corner, it was seven o’clock; she passed to the door and reached it just as the rap was repeated; she opened it, and Mr. Withers, the minister, stood before her; his thin dark figure looming up in the moonshine. “Good evening, Miss Churchill,” said he, stepping in, taking her hand and pressing it gently. “You have quite recovered your fright, I trust?” “Quite, sir,” replied Sophie, laconically, as she reluctantly led the way into the room and set a chair for her minister on the opposite side of her workstand. He dropped himself into it, and extending his long legs towards the little fire, he said,— “You were not at church last Sabbath, Miss Sophie, and it was with a view of inquiring the reason of your absence that I came here—may I make that inquiry now?” “Except while with Mrs. May I have not been to church for many months.” “May I inquire, as your pastor, why?” “The distance is considerable; that, in Summer, would be no objection, but during the Winter and Spring the roads are nearly impassable to a foot passenger, and I have no conveyance.”