ove Mrs. Dike's theory, that no harm is done if
we never think of our troubles, she had neither become the village idol,
nor in any remarkable degree her mother's pride. But she had
nevertheless cut for herself a small niche in the heart of her home,--a
much larger niche, perhaps, than the excellent Mrs. Guest was well aware
of.

"I don't care how small it is," cried Sharley, "as long as I have room
to put my two feet on and look up."

And for that old pain? Ah, well, God knew about that, and
Sharley,--nobody else. Whatever the winter had taught her she had bound
and labelled in her precise little way for future use. At least she had
learned--and it is not everybody who learns it at eighteen,--to wear her
life bravely--"a rose with a golden thorn."

I really think that this is the place to end my story, so properly
polished off with a moral. So many Sharleys, too, will never read
beyond. But being bound in honor to tell the whole moral or no moral, I
must add, that while Sharley walked and thought among her hickories
there came up a thunder-storm. It fell upon her without any warning. The
sky had been clear when she looked at it last. It gaped at her now out
of the throats of purple-black clouds. Thunders crashed over and about
her. All the forest darkened and reeled. Sharley was enough like other
girls to be afraid of a thunder-storm. She started with a cry to break
her way through the matted undergrowth; saw, or felt that she saw, the
glare of a golden arrow overhead; threw out her hands, and fell crushed,
face downward, at the foot of a scorched tree.

When she opened her eyes she was sitting under a wood-pile. Or, to
speak more accurately, she was sitting in Mr. Halcombe Dike's lap, and
Mr. Halcombe Dike was under the wood-pile.

It was a low, triangular wood-pile, roofed with pine boards, through
which the water was dripping. It stood in the centre of a large
clearing, exposed to the rain, but safe.

"Oh!" said Sharley.

"That's right," said he, "I knew you were only stunned. I've been
rubbing your hands and feet. It was better to come here than to run the
blockade of that patch of woods to a house. Don't try to talk."

"I'm not," said Sharley, with a faint little laugh, "it's you that are
talking"; and ended with a weak pause, her head falling back where she
had found it, upon his arm.

"I _wouldn't_ talk," repeated the young man, relevantly, after a
profound silence of five minutes. "I was coming 'acro