  Aims. We study the properties of low-mass stars recently formed in the field
of the NGC 376 cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Methods. Using
photometric observations acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the
V, I and Halpha bands, we identify 244 candidate pre-main sequence (PMS) stars
showing Halpha excess emission at the 5 sigma level and with Halpha equivalent
width of 20 \r{A} or more. We derive physical parameters for all PMS stars,
including masses, ages, and mass accretion rates. We compare the effective mass
accretion rate of stars in NGC 376 to that of objects in the NGC 346 cluster,
which features similar metallicity but higher total mass and gas density.
Results. We find a median age of 28 Myr for this population (with 25 and 75
percentiles at about 20 and 40 Myr, respectively), in excellent agreement with
previous studies of massive stars in the same field. The PMS stars are rather
uniformly distributed across the field, whereas massive stars are more
clustered. The spatial distribution of PMS objects is compatible with them
having formed in the centre of the cluster and then migrated outwards. We find
that in NGC 376 the mass accretion rate is systematically lower than in NGC 346
for stars of the same mass and age. This indicates that, besides metallicity,
there are other environmental factors affecting the rate of mass accretion onto
PMS stars. Our observations suggest that the gas density in the star-forming
region might play a role.
