So passed on that long and miserable autumn, that long and melancholy winter. During this time Letty received a letter from her husband, which informed her and Mr. Barnsdale that he had followed on the trail of the flying miscreant, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and into Ohio. The man seemed possessed by a spirit of unrest, or of fear of pursuit, which kept him constantly in motion. Sometimes he had been on his very heels; sometimes he lost his trail for weeks. In his lonely journeys he had met with some strange occurrences, too numerous to detail; but everywhere he carried in his pocket-book the severe letter of Mrs. Heritage, and inflicted a proper penance on himself by looking at his past image in it, as in a glass. “Ah!” he said, “it is in these long, solitary journeys, through deep woods and through swampy jungles, or amid total strangers, that the brightness and beauty of his once heavenly but abused home came over him with a force which made him curse his now inconceivable folly. And yet,” added he, “that will-o’-the-wisp nature in me is not yet extinct. One day I came upon a great camp-meeting in the midst of the woods, and after witnessing the strange scene for some time I was seized by a spirit of fire, and sprung up into a waggon, and poured forth a harangue on sin and its sorrow; on the strength of weakness in some souls carrying them like maniacs into the whirlwinds of crime and woe; on repentance and backsliding; on heaven and damnation, in such a rush and hurricane of passionate speech, such cries of despair and shouts of ‘Help! help!’ within me to God and Christ, as drew the scattered thousands around me, and flung them into the wildest commotion and shrieks and ejaculations; which seemed more like the riot of a raging ocean tempest than the tumult of human creatures. Suddenly I dropped down, and disappeared amongst the trees; but for days and weeks afterwards I heard of what they called ‘The Wild-fire Preacher,’ who came and went so mysteriously.” Thorsby related that one evening having made his camp for the night, and cut down boughs of the hemlock pine for his bed, an old Friend rode up, and asked leave to pass the night by his fire. He was a small, light man in sober home-spun clothes, who having hobbled out his horse, came and sat down, and drew from his wallet bread and dried venison, and invited Thorsby to partake. He said his name was Jesse Kersey, and that he was on a religious journey into the back settlements. After they had conversed till rather late, the stranger informed Thorsby that his father had left him a good property. Thorsby asked him in what it consisted,—in land? No. In houses? No. In money? No. In teaching him to live on a little. “He who has that fortune,” said Jesse Kersey, “can never want. I would give thee this as a safe rule of life— ‘Keep within compass, and thou wilt be sure To shun many evils that others endure.’”