mpelling life's voyager on his course.
If the current takes a sudden turn, it bears him in a different
direction from which he had intended. The human mind is inexplicable. It
is not a machine that can be taken apart and analyzed. It is not
material that can be grasped and comprehended. It is that mysterious
knowing, feeling and willing, independent of circumstances; that
immortal, indestructible portion of man called soul. It is governed by
no known laws, and at times seems to assume all the caprices of chance.

Charles Stevens was a youth of good strong, common sense; yet he could
but feel strangely impressed by the words and the awful look of Mr.
Parris. The man was surely more than mortal. His voice, hollow and
sepulchral, seemed to issue from the tomb. His thin, cadaverous face was
sufficient in itself to inspire wonder. Those great, blazing eyes had
within them all the fires of lunacy, fanaticism and cunning. Mr. Parris
was nothing more than an unscrupulous bigot. He was ambitious, as is
proven by his machinations in getting himself declared the pastor of
Salem. He was greedy, as is shown by his taking the parsonage and lands
as well as demanding an increase in his stipend. He was revengeful, as
is shown by the way in which he persecuted those who opposed him. He was
unscrupulous in his methods, as is proven in the means he employed. He
was filled with prejudice, as is shown in his assailing Cora Waters,
because her father was an actor; yet Mr. Parris believed himself a
righteous and holy man, walking in the path of the just.

Charles Stevens failed to tell his mother of the strange interview with
the pastor, somehow he could not. He unaccountably shuddered when he
thought of it, and, despite the fact that he had little superstition in
his composition, he felt at times a strange instinctive dread at the
awful warning of the pastor.

Since the evening on which the name of Adelpha Leisler had been
mentioned, Cora Waters had been strangely shy and reticent, so that
Charles Stevens could not tell her of the interview with Mr. Parris,
even if he would. Cora was a remarkable girl. She united in the highest
perfection the rarest of earthly gifts--genius and beauty. No one
possesses superior intellectual qualities without knowing it. The
alliteration of modesty and merit is pretty enough; but where merit is
great, the veil of that modesty never disguises its extent from its
possessor. It is the proud consciousness of ra