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All were astonished at the child's wisdom.

Young Farmer Rodel came in with his wife and asked the child, to tease her:

"Have you brought us a wedding present? For if one eats so, one ought to bring a wedding present."

The father-in-law, moved by an incomprehensible impulse of generosity, secretly slipped a sixpenny piece into the child's hand. Amrei held the coin fast in her palm, nodded to the old man, and said to the young couple:

"I have the promise and an earnest of payment; your deceased mother always promised me that I should serve her, and that no one else should be nurse to her first grand-child."

"Yes, my wife always wished it," said the old farmer approvingly. And what he had refused to do for his wife while she was alive, for fear of having to provide for an orphan, he now did, now that he could no longer please her with it, in order to make it appear before the people that he was doing it out of respect for her memory. But even now he did it not from kindness, but in the correct calculation that the orphan would be serviceable to him, the deposed farmer who was her guardian; and the burden of her maintenance, which would amount to more than her wages, would fall on others and not on him.

The young couple looked at each other, and the man said:

"Bring your bundle to our house tomorrow—you can live with us."

"Very well," said Amrei, "tomorrow I will bring my bundle. But now I should like to take my bundle with me; give me a bottle of wine, and this meat I will wrap up and take to Marianne and my Damie."

They let Amrei have her way; but old Farmer Rodel said to her secretly:

"Give me back my sixpence—I thought you were going to give it up."

"I'll keep that as an earnest from you," answered Amrei slyly; "you shall see, I will give you value for it." Farmer Rodel laughed to himself half angrily, and Amrei went back to Black Marianne with money, wine, and meat.

The house was locked; and there was a great contrast between the loud music and noise and feasting at the wedding house, and the silence and solitude here. Amrei knew where to wait for Marianne on her way home, for the old woman very often went to the stone-quarry and sat there behind a hedge for a long time, listening to the tapping of chisels and mallets. It seemed to her like a melody, carrying her back to the times when her John used to work there too; and so she often sat there, listening and watching.

Sure enough, Amrei found Black Marianne there, and half an hour before quitting time she called Damie up out of the quarry. And here among the rocks a wedding feast was held, more merry than the one amid the noise and music. Damie was especially joyful, and Marianne, too, was unusually cheerful. But she would not drink a drop of the wine, for she had declared that no wine should moisten her lips until she drank it at her John's wedding. When Amrei told with glee how she had got a place at young Farmer Rodel's, and was going there tomorrow, Black Marianne started up in furious anger; picking up a stone and pressing it to her bosom, she said:

"It would be better a thousand times that I had this in me, a stone like this, than a living heart! Why cannot I be alone? Why did I ever allow myself to like anybody again? But now it's all over forever! You false, faithless child! Hardly are you able to raise your wings, than off you fly! But it is well. I am alone, and my John shall be alone, too, when he comes—and what I have wished would come to pass, shall never be!"

With that she ran off toward the village.

"She's a witch, after all," said Damie when she had disappeared. "I won't drink the wine—who knows if she has not bewitched it?"

"You can drink it—she's only a strict Eigenbrötlerin and she has a heavy cross to bear. I know how to win her back again," said Amrei, consolingly.

CHAPTER VII
THE SISTER OF MERCY

During the next year there was plenty of life in Farmer Rodel's house. "Barefoot," for so Amrei was now called, was handy in every way, and knew how to make herself liked by everybody; she could tell the young farmer's wife, who had come to the place as a stranger, what the customs of the village were; she studied the habits and characters of those around her and learned to adapt herself to them. She managed to do all sorts of kindnesses to old Farmer Rodel, who could not get over his chagrin at having had to retire so early, and grumbled all day long about it. She told what a good girl his daughter-in-law was, only that she did not know how to show it. And when, after scarcely a year, the first child came, Amrei evinced so much joy at the event, and was so handy at everything that had to be done, that all in the house were full of her praise; but according to the fashion of such people they were more ready to scold her for any trifling omission than to praise her openly. But Amrei did not expect any praise. She knew so well how to carry the little baby to its grandfather, and just when to take it away again, that it pleased and surprised everybody. And when the baby's first tooth came, and Amrei exhibited it to the grandfather, the old man said:

"I will give you a sixpence for the pleasure you have given me. But do you remember the one you stole from me at the wedding—now you may keep it honestly."

Meanwhile Black Marianne was not forgotten. It was certainly a difficult task to regain her favor. At first Marianne would have nothing to say to Barefoot, whose new mistress would not allow her to go to Marianne's, especially not with the child, as it was always feared that the witch might do the baby some mischief. Great patience and perseverance were required to overcome this prejudice, but it was accomplished at last. Indeed, Little Barefoot brought matters to such a pass that Farmer Rodel himself several times paid a visit to Black Marianne, a thing which astonished the entire village. These visits, however, were soon discontinued, for Marianne once said:

"I am nearly seventy years old and have got on until now without the friendship of a farmer; and it's not worth while to make a change now."

Naturally enough Damie was often with his sister. But young Farmer Rodel objected to this, alleging, not without reason, that it would result in his having to feed the big boy; for in a large house like his one could not see whether a servant was not giving him all kinds of things to eat. He therefore forbade Damie to come to the house, except on Sunday afternoons.

Damie, however, had already seen too much of the comfort of living in a wealthy farmer's house; his mouth watered for the flesh-pots, and he wanted to stay there, if only as a servant. Stone-chipping was such a hungry life. But Barefoot had many objections to make. She told him to remember that he was already learning a second trade, and that he ought to keep at it; that it was a mistake to be always wanting to begin something new, and then to suppose that one could be happy in that way. She said that one must be happy in the place where one was, if one was ever to be happy at all. Damie allowed himself to be persuaded for a time. And so great was the acknowledged authority of Little Barefoot already, and so natural did it seem that she should dictate to her brother, that he was always called "Barefoot's Damie," as if he were not her brother, but her son. And yet he was a head taller than she, and did not act as if he were subordinate to her. Indeed, he often expressed his annoyance that he was not considered as good as she, merely because he did not have a tongue like hers in his head. His discontent with himself and with his trade he always vented first on his sister. She bore it patiently, and because he showed before the world that she was obliged to give him his way, she really gained more influence and power through this very publicity. For everybody said that it was very good of Amrei to do what she did for her brother, and she rose in the public estimation by letting him treat her thus unkindly, while she in turn cared for him like a mother. She washed and darned for him at night so steadily, that he was one of the neatest boys in the village; and instead of taking two stout pairs of shoes, which she received as part of her wages every half year, she always paid the shoemaker a little extra money to make two pairs for Damie, while she herself went barefoot; it was only on Sunday, when she went to church, that she was seen wearing shoes at all.

Little Barefoot was exceedingly annoyed to find that Damie, though no one knew why, had become the general butt of all the joking and teasing in the village. She took him sharply to task for it, and told him he ought not to tolerate it; but he retorted that she ought to speak to the people about it, and not to him, for he could not stand up against it. But that was not to be done—in fact, Damie was secretly not particularly annoyed by being teased everywhere he went. Sometimes, indeed, it hurt him to have everybody laugh at him, and to have boys much younger than himself take liberties with him, but it annoyed him a great deal more to have people take no notice of him at all, and he would then try to make a fool of himself and expose himself to insult.

Barefoot, on the other hand, was certainly in some danger of developing into the hermit Marianne had always professed to recognize in her. She had once attached herself to one single companion, the daughter of Coaly Mathew; but this girl had been away for years, working in a factory in Alsace, and nothing was ever heard of her now. Barefoot lived so entirely by herself that she was not reckoned at all among the young people of the village; she was friendly and sociable with those of her own age, but her only real playmate was Black Marianne. And just because Barefoot lived so much by herself, she had no influence upon the behavior of Damie, who, however much he might be teased and tormented, always had to have the company of others, and could never be alone like his sister.

But now Damie suddenly emancipated himself; one fine Sunday he exhibited to his sister some money he had received as an earnest from Scheckennarre, of Hirlingen, to whom he had hired himself out as a farmhand.

"If you had spoken to me about it first," said Barefoot, "I could have told you of a better place. I would have given you a letter to Farmer Landfried's wife in Allgau; and there you would have been treated like a son of the family."

"Oh, don't talk to me about her!" said Damie crossly. "She has owed me a pair of leather breeches she promised me for nearly thirteen years. Don't you remember?—when we were little, and thought we had only to knock, and mother and father would open the door. Don't talk to me of Dame Landfried! Who knows whether she ever thinks of us, or indeed if she is still alive?"

"Yes, she's alive—she's related to the family which I serve, and they often speak of her. And all her children are married, except one son, who is to have the farm."

"Now you want to make me feel dissatisfied with my new place," said Damie complainingly, "and you go and tell me that I might have had a better one. Is that right?" And his voice faltered.

"Oh, don't be so soft-hearted all the time!" said Barefoot. "Is what I said going to take away any of your good fortune? You are always acting as if the geese were biting you. And now I will only tell you one thing, and that is, that you should hold fast to what you have, and remain where you are. It's no use to be like a cuckoo, sleeping on a different tree every night. I, too, could get other places, but I won't; I have brought it about that I am well off here. Look you, he who is every minute running to another place will always be treated like a stranger—people know that tomorrow he perhaps won't belong to the house, and so they don't make him at home in it today."

"I don't need your preaching," said Damie, and he started to go away in anger. "You are always scolding me, and toward everybody else in the world you are good-natured."

"That's because you are my brother," said Barefoot, laughing and caressing the angry boy.

In truth, a strange difference had developed itself between brother and sister; Damie had a certain begging propensity, and then again the next minute showed a kind of pride; Barefoot, on the other hand, was always good-natured and yielding, but was nevertheless supported by a certain self-respect, which was never detracted from by her willingness to work and oblige.

She now succeeded in pacifying her brother, and said:

"Look, I have an idea. But first you must be good, for the coat must not lie on an angry heart. Farmer Rodel still has in his possession our dear father's clothes; you are tall now, and they will just fit you. Now it will give you a good appearance if you arrive at the farm in such respectable clothes; then your fellow-servants will see where you come from, and what worthy parents you had."

Damie saw that this was sensible, and Barefoot induced old Farmer Rodel—with considerable difficulty, for he did not want to give up the clothes so soon—to hand the garments over to Damie. Barefoot at once took him up to her room and made him put on his father's coat and vest then and there. He objected, but when Amrei had set her heart on a thing, it had to be done. The hat, alone, Damie could not be induced to wear; when he had put on the coat, Amrei laid her hand on his shoulder and said:

"There, now you are my brother and my father, and now the coat is going to be worn again with a new man in it. Look, Damie,—you have there the finest coat of honor in the world; hold it in honor, and be as worthy and honest in it as our dear father was."

She could say no more. She laid her head on her brother's shoulder, and tears fell upon the paternal coat which had once more been brought to light.

"You say that I am soft-hearted," said Damie, "and you are much worse yourself."

And Barefoot was indeed deeply and quickly moved by anything; but she was strong and light-hearted like a child. It was true of her, what Marianne had observed when she went to sleep for the first time in the old woman's house; she was waking and sleeping, laughing and weeping, almost all at the same time. Every occurrence and every emotion affected her very strongly, but she soon got over it and recovered her balance.

She continued to weep.

"You make one's heart so heavy," said Damie complainingly.

"It's hard enough to have to go away from one's home and live among strangers. You ought rather to cheer me up, than to be so—so—."

"Right thinking is the best cheer," replied Amrei. "It does not weigh upon the heart at all. But you are right—you have enough to bear; a single pound added to the load might crush you. I am foolish after all. But come—let us see now what the sun has to say, when father walks out in its light once more. No, I didn't mean to say that. Come, you yourself surely know where we must go, and what you must take leave of; for even if you are going only a couple of miles away, still you are going away from the village, and you must bid it good-by. It's hard enough for me that I am not to have you with me any longer—no, I mean that I am not to be with you any longer, for I don't want to rule over you, as people say I do. Yes, yes,—old Marianne was right; alone is a great word; one can't possibly learn all that it means. As long as you were living on the other side of the street, even if I did not see you for a week at a time, it did not matter; for I could have you at any moment, and that was as good as living together. But now—well, it's not out of the world, after all. But remember, don't try to lift too much, or hurt yourself in your work. And when any of your things are torn, send them to me—I'll mend them for you, and continue to knit for you. And now, come, let us go to the churchyard."

Damie objected to this plan, making the plea that he felt the parting heavy enough, and did not want to make it any heavier. His sister gave in. He took off his father's clothes again, and Barefoot packed them in the sack she had once worn as a cloak in the days when she kept the geese. This sack still bore her father's name upon it, and she charged Damie specially to send her back the sack at the first opportunity.

The brother and sister went out together. A cart belonging to Hirlingen was passing through the village; Damie hailed it, and quickly loaded his possessions on it. Then he walked with his sister, hand in hand, out of the village, and Barefoot sought to cheer him up by saying:

"Do you remember the riddle I asked you there by the oven?"

"No."

"Think: What is best about the oven?"

"No."

 
"Of the oven this is best, 'tis said,
That it never itself doth eat the bread."
 

"Yes, you can be cheerful—you're going to stay home."

"But it was your own wish to go away. And you can be cheerful, too, if you only try hard enough."

In silence she walked on with her brother to the Holderwasen. There, under the wild pear-tree, she said:

"Here we will say good-by. God bless you, and don't be afraid of anything!"

They shook hands warmly, and then Damie walked on toward Hirlingen, and Barefoot turned back toward the village. Not until she got to the foot of the hill, where Damie could not see her, did she venture to lift up her apron and wipe away the tears that were running down her cheeks.

[Amrei and Damie were separated for three years. During this time the girl made herself more and more liked and respected by everybody, not only on account of her pleasant ways and general helpfulness, but also on account of her self-sacrificing devotion to her unappreciative brother. While her going barefoot and having been a goose-girl caused her to be the victim of more or less raillery, still nobody meant it at all seriously unless it was Rose, Farmer Rodel's youngest daughter, who was jealous of Amrei's popularity. One day when Amrei was standing by her window, she heard the fire-bell ringing.]

"There's a fire at Scheckennarre's, at Hirlingen!" was the cry outside. The engine was brought out, and Barefoot climbed upon it and rode away with the firemen.

"My Damie! My Damie!" she kept repeating to herself in great alarm. But it was day-time, and in the day-time people could not be burned to death in a fire. And sure enough, when they arrived at Hirlingen, the house was already in ashes. Beside the road, in an orchard, stood Damie in the act of tying two piebalds,—fine, handsome horses,—to a tree; and oxen, bulls, and cows were all running about in confusion.

They stopped the engine to let Barefoot get off, and with a cry of "God be praised that nothing has happened to you!" she hurried toward her brother. Damie, however, made no reply, and stood with both hands resting on the neck of one of the horses.

"What is it? Why don't you speak? Have you hurt yourself?"

"I have not hurt myself, but the fire has hurt me."

"What's the matter?"

"All I have is lost—all my clothes and my little bit of money! I've nothing now but what's on my back."

"And are father's clothes burnt too?"

"Are they fireproof?" replied Damie, angrily. "Don't ask such stupid questions!"

Barefoot was ready to cry at this ungracious reception by her brother; but she quickly remembered, as if by intuition, that misfortune in its first shock often makes people harsh, unkind, and quarrelsome. So she merely said:

"Thank God that you have escaped with your life! Father's clothes—to be sure, in those there's something lost that cannot be replaced—but sooner or later they would have been worn out anyway."

"All your chattering will do no good," said Damie, still stroking the horse. "Here I stand like a miserable outcast. If the horses here could talk, they'd tell a different story. But I am born to misfortune—whatever I do that's good, is of no use. And yet—" He could say no more; his voice faltered.

"What has happened?"

"There are the horses, and the cows, and the oxen—not one of them was burned. Look, that horse over there tore my shirt when I was dragging him out of the stable. This nigh horse here did me no harm—he knows me. Eh, Humple, you know me, don't you? We know each other, don't we?" The horse laid his head across the neck of the other and stared at Damie, who went on:

"And when I joyfully went to tell the farmer that I had saved all his cattle, he said: 'You needn't have done it—they were all well insured, and I would have been paid good money for them.' 'Yes,' thinks I to myself, 'but to have let the poor beasts die, is that nothing? If a thing's paid for, is that all?' The farmer must have read in my face what I was thinking of, for he says to me: 'Of course, you saved your clothes and your property?' And then I says: 'No, not a stitch. I ran out to the stable directly.' And then he says: 'You're a noodle!' 'What?' says I, 'You're insured?—Well then, if the cattle would have been paid for, my clothes shall be paid for—and some of my dead father's clothes were among them, and fourteen guilders, and my watch, and my pipe.' And says he: 'Go smoke it! My property is insured, but not my servant's property.' And I says: 'We'll see about that—I'll take it to court!' Whereupon he says: 'Now you may go at once. Threatening a lawsuit is the same as giving notice. I would have given you a few guilders, but now you shan't have a farthing. And now, hurry up—away with you!' And so here I am. And I think I ought to take my nigh horse with me, for I saved his life, and he would be glad to go with me, wouldn't you? But I have never learned to steal, and I shouldn't know what to do now. The best thing for me to do is to jump into the water. For I shall never amount to anything as long as I live, and I have nothing now."

"But I still have something, and I will help you out."

"No, I won't do that any longer—always depending upon you. You have a hard enough time earning what you have."

Barefoot tried to comfort her brother, and succeeded so far that he consented to go home with her. But they had scarcely gone a hundred paces, when they heard something trotting along behind them. It was the horse; he had broken loose and had followed Damie, who was obliged to drive back the creature he was so fond of by flinging stones at it.

Damie was ashamed of his misfortune, and would hardly show his face to any one; for it is a peculiarity of weak natures that they feel their strength, not in their own self-respect, but always wish to show how much they can really do by some visible achievement. Misfortune they regard as evidence of their own weakness, and if they cannot hide it, they hide themselves.

Damie would go no farther than the first houses in the village. Black Marianne gave him a coat that had belonged to her slain husband; Damie felt a terrible repugnance at putting it on, and Amrei, who had before spoken of her father's coat as something sacred, now found just as many arguments to prove that there was nothing in a coat after all, and that it did not matter in the least who had once worn it.

Coaly Mathew, who lived not far from Black Marianne, took Damie as his assistant at tree-felling and charcoal-burning. This solitary life pleased Damie best; for he only wanted to wait until the time came when he could be a soldier, and then he would enter the army as a substitute and remain a soldier all his life. For in a soldier's life there is justice and order, and no one has brothers and sisters, and no one has his own house, and a man is provided with clothing and meat and drink; and if there should be a war, why a brave soldier's death is after all the best.

Such were the sentiments that Damie expressed one Sunday in Mossbrook Wood, when Barefoot came out to the charcoal-burner's to bring her brother yeast, and meal, and tobacco. She wanted to show him how—in addition to the general charcoal-burner's fare, which consists of bread baked with yeast—he might make the dumplings he prepared for himself taste better. But Damie would not listen to her; he said he preferred to have them just as they were—he rather liked to swallow bad food when he might have had better; and altogether, he derived a kind of satisfaction from self-neglect, until he should some day be decked out as a soldier.

Barefoot fought against this continual looking forward to a future time, and this loss of time in the present. She was always wanting to put some life into Damie, who rather enjoyed being indolent and pitying himself. Indeed, he seemed to find a sort of satisfaction in his downward course, for it gave him an opportunity to pity himself to his heart's content, and did not require him to make any physical exertion. With great difficulty Barefoot managed to prevail so far that he at least bought an ax of his own out of his earnings; and it was his father's ax, which Coaly Mathew had bought at the auction in the old days.

Barefoot often came back out of the Wood in profound despair, but this state of mind never lasted long. Her inward confidence in herself, and the natural cheerfulness that was in her, involuntarily burst forth from her lips in song; and anybody who did not know her, would never have thought that Barefoot either had a care then, or ever had had one in all her life.

The satisfaction arising from the feeling that she was sturdily and untiringly doing her duty, and acting as a Samaritan to Black Marianne and Damie, impressed an indelible cheerfulness on her countenance; in the whole house there was no one who could laugh so heartily as Barefoot. Old Farmer Rodel declared that her laughter sounded like the song of a quail, and because she was always serviceable and respectful to him, he gave her to understand that he would remember her in his will. Barefoot did not pay much attention to this or build much upon it; she looked only for the wages to which she had a true and honest claim; and what she did, she did from an inward feeling of benevolence, without expectation of reward.