y.

"Ah!" exclaimed the girl, her eyes glistening.

"Oh, if you like birds you are going to enjoy the Mill Farm. We have a
very respectable choir in these woods. Now we could keep on in this
path past the mill, 'way out to the end of the peninsula, but we don't
this time; instead we turn right here and then"--the speaker waved his
hand up a gentle incline, at the head of which stood an oblong white
house with green blinds; "that's the Mill Farm."

"Judge Trent's farm." Sylvia's eyes met those of her host. "Why did you
deceive me?" she repeated, gazing at him while they stood still in the
soft grass.

Thinkright brought the knuckles of one of his hands into the hard palm
of the other. "I asked you to come to the farm, didn't I? You were not
thinking kindly of Judge Trent then; you were wasting your time
thinking wrong about his wrong doings. If I'd said come and be your
uncle's guest at the Mill Farm instead of at the Young Woman's
Christian Association, you'd have questioned and doubted some time
probably, and we might not have caught that evening train to Portland,
and it was best for me to get home."

Sylvia bit her lip.

"Now there isn't one thing to do but think right," went on her host
kindly, "and you'll be happy as a girl should be. You believe there's
satisfaction in slapping back, and it galls you because you can't. It's
the greatest mistake you can imagine. The satisfaction of slapping back
only leads on to greater complications and final disaster in a logical
sequence. Now, I'm not penniless, my little cousin. Just at present
you're my guest."

"Oh, am I really, Cousin Thinkright?" cried the girl eagerly.

"Surely you are."

"Then I can begin to have a good time right off," she exclaimed, her
white cheeks flushing as she took his arm in her relief.

He smiled as they walked slowly up the incline. "Always have a good
time," he said. "The daughter of a great King should hide her head in
shame if she admits any other thought."

CHAPTER VIII

IN HARBOR

As Cap'n Lem's team drew deliberately up the hill to the house, his
daughter-in-law and grandchild came out on the doorstep. "Hello, Lucil;
hello, Minty," he cried.

Twelve-year-old Araminta, dressed in a red plaid frock, long of legs
and arms, round of eyes, and with her braid beribboned in pink in honor
of the unknown, looked her disappointment. "They never come!" she
exclaimed. "We might jest as well as not rode to town, ma."

"Well