theirs. But it was a long time before the
impression was effaced from the child's imagination.

Dora had been standing by the hedge, as usual, hoping that the children
would come into the garden, when Wili and Lili appeared with the bow. She
had watched the progress of their undertaking with the greatest interest.
At last, off flew the arrow; and in a second, the sharp point pierced the
little girl's bare arm. Dora groaned aloud with pain. The arrow fell to
the ground; it had not penetrated deep enough to hold at all; but the
blood followed, and trickled along her arm and hand, and down upon her
dress. At this sight Dora forgot her pain in her fear. Her first thought
was, "How Aunt Ninette will scold!" She tried to hide what had happened.
She twisted her handkerchief about the wounded arm, and she ran to the
spring before the house, to wash out all signs of blood. It was useless;
the blood flowed out under the bandage in a stream, and soon her dress was
spotted all over with the red drops.

"Dora! Dora!" called some one from above. It was her aunt; there was no
help for it; she must show herself. In fear and trembling, she mounted the
stairs and stood before her aunt, hiding the bandaged arm behind her. Her
pretty Sunday dress was stained with blood, and her face too; for in her
eagerness to wash it off she had spread it everywhere.

"Merciful Heaven!" cried her aunt, "what is the matter? Speak, child, did
you fall down? How you look! You are as pale as death, and all smeared
with blood! Dora, for heaven's sake, do speak!"

Dora had been trying to speak, but she could not get in a word edgewise.
At last she said timidly,

"It was an arrow!"

A flood of lamentations followed. Aunt Ninette flew up and down the room
wringing her hands and crying, "An arrow! an arrow! You have been shot!
Shot in the arm! You will have a stiff arm all your life! You will be a
cripple! You can never sew any more, nor do anything else! You will come
to want! We shall all have to suffer for it! How unlucky we are! How are
we to live, how can we ever get along, if your arm is lame?"

"Oh, Aunty dear, perhaps it will not be as bad as all that;" said the
child sobbing, "did not papa tell us to remember:

"God holds us in his hand
God knows the best to send."

"Certainly, of course that's true; but if you are lame, you will be lame;"
said Mrs. Ehrenreich, whimpering, "it makes me perfectly desperate. But
go--no--come here to the