“Your pipe is smoked out,” he said; “my things were insured, but not those of my servants.”
“I answered, ‘That is to be seen; I will try what the law can do.’”
“Oh!” said he, “if that is your sort, you may go at once. He who begins a lawsuit, has given warning. I would have given you a couple of florins, but now not a penny. Now be off!”
“And here I am; now I think I might take this near-handed horse with me. I saved his life, and he would willingly come with me. But I have not learnt to steal, and I cannot help myself thus. The best thing I can do is to spring into that water and drown myself. I can never come to any thing, and can never help myself again.”
“But I have something, and I will help you,” said Barefoot.
“No, that I’ll do no longer—no longer live upon you. You also have to work hard.”
Barefoot succeeded in consoling her brother, so that he consented to go home with her. But scarcely had they gone a hundred steps, when the favorite horse, having broken loose, came trotting after them. Dami had to drive the animal he loved so much back with stones.
Dami was so ashamed of his ill luck, that he was unwilling to see any one; for it is the peculiarity of weak natures that they cannot feel any strength in themselves; when outwardly overcome, they are conquered inwardly—they look upon ill success as a sign of their own weakness, and if they cannot conceal that, they conceal themselves.
At the first houses of the village Dami stopped. Mariann sent him a coat of her husband’s, who had been shot; but Dami felt an unconquerable repugnance to putting it on. Barefoot, who had praised her father’s coat as something sacred and holy, now found good reasons to prove that there was nothing in a coat—that nothing could adhere to it from its former wearer.
Mathew, the charcoal-burner, who lived not far from Mariann, took Dami to help him in his wood-splitting and coal-burning. To Dami this secluded life was most welcome; he was waiting only till he could be drafted for a soldier; then he would enlist for life, and remain always a soldier. “In the army,” he said, “is justice and order, and no man has trouble from his own family; food and clothing are provided, and when war comes, a soldier’s sudden death is always the best.”