"If forms and
words are of any use to him, a man will never come," he said; "if he
comes, let him alone." And it may be that this difference between the
Founder and his disciples was due to the fact that the Founder believed
that, given a fair field in any honest mind, his views must prevail,
whereas the disciples were not so strong in faith.

It is very possible the disciples were right, in a way; but still the
Founder's scheme now and then caught a great prize that the disciples
would have lost through their overgreat meddling. The Founder would have
repudiated the idea of differences in value between souls. But men
sometimes act on ideas they repudiate, and with very good results.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the Retreat might be, it was just the
place Stafford wanted. He shrank, almost with loathing, from the
thought of exposing himself to well meant ministrations from men who
were his inferiors: the theory of the equalizing effect of the sacred
office, which appears to be held in great tranquillity by many who see
the absurdity of parallel ideas applied in other spheres, was one of the
fictions that proved entirely powerless over his mind at this juncture.
He did not say to himself that fools were fools and blind men blind,
whatever their office, degree, or profession, but he was driven to the
Retreat by a thought that a brutal speaker might have rendered for him
in those words without essential misrepresentation. Above all, he wanted
quiet--time to understand the new forces and to estimate the good or
evil of the new ideas.

Arriving there late in the evening of the same day on which he left
Millstead, for the Retreat was situated on the borders of Exmoor and the
journey from Paddington was long and slow, he was received by the
Superintendent with the grave welcome and studious absence of
questioning that was the rule of the house. The Superintendent was an
elderly man, inclining to stoutness and of unyielding placidity. It was
suspected that the Founder had taken pains to choose a man who would
observe his injunction of not meddling with thorny questions the more
strictly from his own inability to understand them.

"We are very empty just now," he said, with a sigh. Poor man! perhaps
it was dull. "Only two, besides yourself."

"The fewer the better," said Stafford, with a smile, half in earnest,
half humoring the genius of the place.

The Superintendent looked as if he might have said something on t