"There it is again!" Doctor Colbert went on, as if he had been waiting and listening for the sound. "There must be great excitement at the camp-meeting on this last night. Does it still interest you, Father? It does me, intensely. This is not the usual peculiar excitement which seems to belong to a crowd, though that, too, is always curious, mysterious, and interesting. We all know well enough that for some unknown reason a crowd will do wild, strange, and foolish things, which the individuals composing it would never be guilty of alone. But this is something entirely different and still more curious and mysterious. Those people down yonder keep this up by themselves when they are alone--it attacks some of them before they have ever seen one of the meetings. It is certainly the strangest phenomenon of its kind that the world ever saw. It never loses its painful fascination for me. I can't pass it by. How is it with you?" The priest hesitated before replying. "Any form of faith--the crudest, the most absurd that any soul ever staked its salvation upon--must always be the most interesting subject in the world to every thinking mind." "It seems so to me," the doctor replied. "And I assure you that there is no irreverence in the scientific curiosity which I feel in this extraordinary epidemic of religious frenzy; for it is certainly something of that sort. It is unmistakably contagious. I have become more and more certain of that as I have watched the poor wretches who are shrieking down yonder. It is a mental and moral epidemic, and so highly contagious that it has swept the whole state, till it now sweeps the remotest corner of the wilderness. And it seems to have originated in Kentucky. It is something peculiarly our own." "Yes," said Father Orin, "Kentucky is the pioneer in religion, as well as politics, for the whole West. But my church came first," he added with a chuckle. "Remember that! The Catholics always lead the way and clear up the brush, with the Methodists following close behind. I got a little the start of brother Peter Cartwright; but that was my good luck, and not any lack of zeal on his part. And I've got to stir my stumps to keep ahead of him, I can tell you." "He is down there at the meeting to-night, no doubt. He is its leading spirit. I should like to know what he really thinks of it all. He is by nature a wonderfully intelligent young fellow. And what do you really think of it, Father?" the doctor pressed. "Is this the same thing that has come down the ages? Is it the same that we find in the Bible--making great men and wise ones do such wild things? Is it the same that made a dignified gentleman, like David, dance--as those fanatics are doing down there--till he became a laughing-stock? Is it the same that made a sensible man like Saul join his faith to a witch and believe that he saw visions? And then, just remember the scandalous capers--even worse than the others--that the decent Jeremiah cut."