"Just that. The liberty is not mine. I can only expect you to be true to your trust as I am true as a minister to mine."
This was an idea Rollie could not grasp readily. It was taking away a prop upon which he had meant to lean.
"But," he argued, "you make it possible for me to take your money and that of your friends and keep it, if you don't have some kind of a club over me."
"Exactly," replied the minister. "I want no club over you, Rollie. You must be a free agent, or else I have not really trusted you. Your right action would mean nothing if compulsory. You must be true to your trust from some inner spiritual motive."
But Rollie was still groping. "And if I should, for instance, steal the money you give me?"
"You would know it, and I, and one other," replied the minister, raising his eyes devoutly.
Rollie swept his hand across his face slowly, with a gesture of bewilderment. This minister was taking him to higher and higher ground. He began to feel as if he had been led up to some transfiguring mountain peak of moral eminence.
"It is the highest appeal which could be made to the honor of another," he breathed in tones approaching awe.
"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul."
In a wordless interval, Rollie Burbeck pressed the minister's hand once more and departed, his face still wearing a veiled expression as if he had not quite caught the import of all that had been said.