’Mr. Golding, said she, putting her hands on his arm, ’what means that man by his farewell to you?  Sure you are not befooled and led away by his deceiving words to believe such madness as he speaks?’

Andrew started at her touch, like a man waking from a dream.  He then looked seriously at her, and said,—­

’Madam, I cannot say yet how much I believe of yon good man’s doctrine; but I will not rest till I know more of it.  If I find it to be as heavenly true as it hath seemed to me this day, not all the joys and glories of the world should hold me back from embracing it; at which Althea, letting her hands fall from his arm, stood as if she were turned into stone, her eyes remaining fixed on him sorrowfully.  I suppose he could not endure that look; for he turned away sharply and went out of the hall.

‘I feared this,’ said Mr. Truelocke.  He looked quite weary and spent.  ’These men have a strange eloquence; and I cannot wonder that such youths as our Andrew should think their words are indeed set off by some superior Power,—­the more, since none can deny that they preach what they practise.  I would I could have imbued all my hearers with a like burning sincerity.’

This was nearly all I heard about that long conference of theirs; for after some more lamentations over its ill result, which, Harry whispered me, they might have expected, Mr. Truelocke departed with his son, and Aunt Golding remained so troubled that I did not like to question her about what had passed.  But all the more was I curious to know what the man’s doctrine was; and on the first fair occasion I found, I began to ask Andrew to describe it to me.  Poor youth! he was mightily pleased with my inquiry, thinking, doubtless, that it sprang from a real thirst for truth like his own; and to the best of his power he complied with my wish.  I found he had not been altogether ignorant of this new teaching for some months back.

‘We English Christians,’ said he, ’have fallen into many hurtful snares by our lack of faith in God’s great gift of the Holy Spirit, the mighty boon which the risen Saviour promised to His followers, and which truly came according to His word.  I have often wondered,’ said he, ’that we all profess and say, as often as we repeat the Creed, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” yet we act and think as if we believed not in Him.’  And from this point he went on to tell me how George Fox, first of all, and many others after him, had been going about the country endeavouring to make people alive to the high privilege they had so long slighted, to their own exceeding hurt; ‘also,’ said he, ’these men, in obedience to the inward Voice that instructs them, strive to bring people off from their formal man-made religions to the primitive purity of Christ’s religion, which consists not in rites and ceremonies, repeating of forms of prayer, singing of hymns, and ringing of bells, but in a holy and harmless life;’ and he quoted many things out of the Sermon on the Mount, ‘which,’ said he, ’the common run of Christians never dream of obeying; but the poor Friends practise them most strictly.’