“I know where I could get well.”

“Where?” asked Chester.

“At Piney Ridge Cottage.”

Chester neither agreed nor denied.  Just then a steamer came into sight, eastward bound.  It proved to be an “ocean grayhound,” and Captain Brown coming up, let them look at it through his glass.

“She’s going some,” remarked the captain; “but I’ll warrant the passengers are not riding as easy as we.”

“Somehow,” said the father, “a passing steamer always brings to me profound thoughts.  Now, there, for example, is a spot on the vast expanse of water.  It is but a speck, yet within it is a little world, teeming with life.  The ship comes into our view, then passes away.  Again, the ship is just a part of a great machine—­I use this figure for want of a better one.  Every individual on the ship bears a certain relationship to the vessel; the steamer is a part of this world; this world is a cog in the machinery of the solar system; the solar system is but a small group of worlds, which is a part of and depends on, something as much vaster as the world is to this ship.  This men call the Universe; but all questions of what or where or when pertaining to this universe are unanswerable.  We are lost—­we know nothing about it—­it is beyond our finite minds.”

Captain Brown stood listening to this exposition.  His eyes were on the speaker, then on the passing steamer, then on the speaker again.

“Mr. Strong,” said he, “at the last church service I attended in Liverpool, the minister was trying to explain what God is,—­and just that which you have said is beyond us, that vast, unknown, unknowable something he called God.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Lucy, involuntarily.

“I’ll admit the definition is not very plain,” continued the captain.  “We get no sense of nearness from it.  I would not know how to pray to or worship such a God; but what are we to do?  I have never heard anything more satisfactory, except—­well, only when I read my Bible.”

“Why not take the plain statement of the Bible, then?” suggested Chester.

“I try to, but my thinking of these things is not clear, because of the interpretation the preachers put upon them—­excuse the statement, Mr. Strong; but perhaps you are an exception.  I have never heard you preach.”

The minister smiled good-naturedly.  Then he said, “Chester here, is quite a preacher himself.  Ask his opinion on the matter.”

“I shall be happy to listen to him.  However, I have an errand just now.  Will you go with me?” this to Chester.

Chester, annoyed for a moment at this unexpected turn, arose and followed the captain into his quarters.

“Sit down,” said the captain.  “I was glad Mr. Strong gave me an opportunity to get you away, for I have a matter I wish to speak to you about, a matter which I think best to keep from both Mr. Strong and Lucy—­but which you ought to know.”