With still greater astonishment Foley protested that he knew nothing; he had feared Sutton might be in trouble, but having just returned, after two years abroad, he had no idea of what the trouble was. His assurances were so evidently sincere, that Abel, who had looked at him suspiciously at first, now shut the door and came forward into the room. The trouble was that Sutton had absolutely refused to go back to America. They might have known it would happen, he added; and, in answer to a question of Foley's, he gave his version of all that had occurred. Sutton had come to Oxford with a letter from Dr. Turnpenny, his pastor and guardian, requesting Dr. Joseph to see that he should live under some kind of care and protection. Dr. Joseph, as their own buildings were not yet finished, had arranged with the Warden of St. Mary's that the young man should enter that College and live there, while he carried on his theological work with his own tutors. It was a mistake; Abel had thought it a mistake all along. With another man it might not have mattered; but Sutton, thrown into the society of rich young men, who had no sympathy with his ideas, and who ridiculed his ways, had not been able to withstand their influence. And just when he was on the point of ordination, he had thrown it all over; said he no longer believed in Methodism, or wished to be a minister. He had stayed for another year in Oxford, studying, or pretending to study, history; but he could not have worked very seriously; the examiners said, indeed, that his papers were full of the most absurd ideas. And now he refused to go back to America at all. Abel didn't know who it was who had tried to pervert him; it was reported to be the Jesuits--and there was a man called Gerard, Sir Philip Gerard--; but at any rate they ought to know what trouble they had made. Foley said he was certain there had been no deliberate attempt to pervert Sutton. If any of his friends had tried to influence him, it was probably because they believed in culture, and thought it would help him in his work. "Help him to be a minister out in Indiana! How could the ideas of a narrow university set and its expensive tastes help a man for that?" "But everyone surely was the better for being cultivated!" Foley exclaimed.