"Look out there, Linda,"--Mrs. Porter indicated the starry firmament visible through the broad window, every golden point scintillating in the crystal clear air. "The marvelous order and peace of that sky will rest you and make you realize what it is to allow yourself to be guided by the same Mind that planned those unthinkable depths yet which notes the sparrow's fall. Turn to Him. Never mind Bertram King and Linda Barry. Just know that God is Love, and that to-morrow you will be guided to take steps in the right direction. 'Commit thy way unto Him and He will bring it to pass.'" "Bring what to pass?" asked Linda eagerly. "What?" "Ah, there comes in the temptation to outline. We can't tell what; but we must have faith that it will be the best thing, the happiest thing." "Yes, I know," dejectedly. "I preached it all to Fred." "That's it, dear. We don't really know these truths--they're not ours until we've lived them." A few minutes longer Mrs. Porter sat on the foot of Linda's bed. The crescent moon dropped into the west, and the waves lapped the rugged shore in long, murmurous sweeps. They talked no more, and when Mrs. Porter said good-night and went to her own room, had it not been so dark she would have observed that a photograph of Bertram King had found a place on Linda's table. CHAPTER XXIII A GOOD NEIGHBOR Miss Benslow was wont to refer to her weather-beaten house, woefully in need of paint, as "the homestead." In her grandfather's time the place had been a small farm, but Cy Benslow had sold all of it but a couple of acres to Portland people who had put up cheap summer cottages. The house was set back some two hundred feet from the sea and a few Balm-of-Gilead trees relieved the monotony of the wind-swept landscape. Madge Lindsay had found places for a couple of hammocks, which Fred Whitcomb observed with satisfaction on his arrival with his charge. "You're perfectly welcome to them," Miss Lindsay assured him. "Did you ever play the rôle of a head of cabbage for six weeks?" "Is it anything like a blockhead?" inquired Whitcomb. "I've played that all my life." "Yes, they're ever so much the same," drawled Madge. Perhaps she had affected a drawl to offset her devoted mother's snappy, nervous manner. At any rate, it was second nature now. "You're not allowed to have an idea when you're assigned the rôle of cabbage head; so it amounts to the same thing as your limitation." "Thanks awfully," returned Whitcomb. "It's worth everything to discover sympathy." He was establishing King in a steamer chair on the piazza while they were talking: a precarious piazza it was, with a list to leeward. Mrs. Lindsay looked on solicitously and held ready a steamer rug. "These slanting boards used to make me seasick at first," she said, "but after a while you don't mind anything here, the air is so divine and there's so much of it." She extinguished King's evident shiver with her rug.