there
was something latent in their brown depths which prompted him, after a
brief dalliance of interchanging glances, to look again at the swings.

"That old maid Curran is really too ridiculous, with those white
stockings of hers," remarked Celia; "some friend ought to tell her to
dye them."

"Or pad them," suggested Father Forbes, with a gay little chuckle. "I
daresay the question of swings and ladies' stockings hardly arises with
you, over at the camp-meeting, Mr. Ware?"

Theron laughed aloud at the conceit. "I should say not!" he replied.

"I'm just dying to see a camp-meeting!" said Celia. "You hear such racy
accounts of what goes on at them."

"Don't go, I beg of you!" urged Theron, with doleful emphasis. "Don't
let's even talk about them. I should like to feel this afternoon as if
there was no such thing within a thousand miles of me as a camp-meeting.
Do you know, all this interests me enormously. It is a revelation to me
to see these thousands of good, decent, ordinary people, just frankly
enjoying themselves like human beings. I suppose that in this whole huge
crowd there isn't a single person who will mention the subject of his
soul to any other person all day long."

"I should think the assumption was a safe one," said the priest,
smilingly, "unless," he added on afterthought, "it be by way of a genial
profanity. There used to be some old Clare men who said 'Hell to my
soul!' when they missed at quoits, but I haven't heard it for a long
time. I daresay they're all dead."

"I shall never forget that death-bed--where I saw you first," remarked
Theron, musingly. "I date from that experience a whole new life. I have
been greatly struck lately, in reading our 'Northern Christian Advocate'
to see in the obituary notices of prominent Methodists how over and over
again it is recorded that they got religion in their youth through being
frightened by some illness of their own, or some epidemic about them.
The cholera year of 1832 seems to have made Methodists hand over
fist. Even to this day our most successful revivalists, those who work
conversions wholesale wherever they go, do it more by frightful pictures
of hell-fire surrounding the sinner's death-bed than anything else.
You could hear the same thing at our camp-meeting tonight, if you were
there."

"There isn't so much difference as you think," said Father Forbes,
dispassionately. "Your people keep examining their souls, just as
children keep pullin