Even out there, Hale had told her,
she would go some day. The last curving up-sweep came finally, and
there stood the big Pine, majestic, unchanged and murmuring in the
wind like the undertone of a far-off sea. As they passed the base
of it, she reached out her hand and let the tips of her fingers
brush caressingly across its trunk, turned quickly for a last look
at the sunlit valley and the hills of the outer world and then the
two passed into a green gloom of shadow and thick leaves that shut
her heart in as suddenly as though some human hand had clutched
it. She was going home--to see Bub and Loretta and Uncle Billy and
"old Hon" and her step-mother and Dave, and yet she felt vaguely
troubled. The valley on the other side was in dazzling sunshine--
she had seen that. The sun must still be shining over there--it
must be shining above her over here, for here and there shot a
sunbeam message from that outer world down through the leaves, and
yet it seemed that black night had suddenly fallen about her, and
helplessly she wondered about it all, with her hands gripped tight
and her eyes wide. But the mood was gone when they emerged at the
"deadening" on the last spur and she saw Lonesome Cove and the
roof of her little home peacefully asleep in the same sun that
shone on the valley over the mountain.
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