If Hugh Fraser changed as he read that fateful letter in London, he changed far more after he came to live at the Manse. And it seemed to me that there were times when--how shall I put it?--when he bore a curious, and, to me, almost intolerable likeness to--some one who was dead. A certain old man's manner came upon him at moments. His body, in sitting or standing, assumed, to my eyes, elderly and damnable attitudes. Once, when I glanced in at the study window before entering the Manse, I perceived him lounging over a table facing me, a pen in his hand and paper before him, and the spectacle threw all my senses into a violent and most distressing disorder. Instead of going into the house, as I had intended, I struck sharply upon the glass at the window. Fraser looked up quickly.
"What--what are you writing?" I cried out.
He got up, came to the window, and opened it.
"Eh? What's the row, man?" he said. "Why don't you come in?"
I repeated my question, with an anxiety I strove to mask.
"Writing? Only a letter to town," he said, looking at me in wonder.
"A sermon? Good heavens, no. Why should I write a sermon?"
"Oh," I replied, forcing an uneasy laugh. "You--you live in a Manse. Doctor Wedderburn used to write his sermons in that room."
That evening I remember that I said to Kate:
"Don't you think Fraser is getting to look very old at times?"
"I haven't observed it," she replied coldly.
Another curious thing. Very soon after he took up his abode in the Manse, Fraser, who had been a godly youth, became markedly averse to religion. He informed us, with some excitement, that he had changed his views, and seemed much inclined to carry on an atheistical propaganda among the devout people of the neighbourhood. He declared that much evil had been wrought by faith in Carlounie, and appeared to deem it as his special duty to preach some sort of a crusade against the accepted Christianity of the parish. I began to combat his views, and once sought the reason of his ardour and self-election to the post of teacher. His answer struck me exceedingly. He said:--
"Why should I be the one to clear away these senseless beliefs in phantasms, you say? Why, because I suppose they were woven by my predecessor in the Manse. Didn't the minister live and die there? Do you know, Ralston, sometimes, as I sit in that study at night, I have a feeling that instead of turning to what is called repentance when he died, the minister turned the other way, recanted in his last hour the faith he had professed all through his life, and expired before he could give words to his new mind and heart. And then I feel as if his influence was left behind him in that room, and fell upon me and imposed on me this mission."