She sat down upon the stump of a tree. Her heart throbbed and glowed. The flame could not break out; it consumed her inwardly. The birds sang sweetly. The branches in the forest rustled. Ah, what is all this, if no clear note is returned in the heart? As if in a dream, Barefoot remembered how she had once cherished thoughts of love. “How,” she asked herself,—“how couldst thou suffer such wishes to arise? Hadst thou not misery enough in thyself, and in thy brother?” The thought of this love was to her now like the recollection of a warm sunny day, in the midst of winter. We can believe that it was once warm and sunny, but we can understand it no longer. She must now learn the misery of waiting, of hope deferred, standing high upon a summit, where there is scarcely a hand’s-breadth to support one. The old misery returns, forever increasing.
She went into the stone hut of the coal-burner; there lay a sack scarcely half full, with the name of her father upon it.
“Oh! how you have been dragged about,” she said, half aloud. She checked her excitement. She wished to see what Dami had brought back with him. “He has at least the good shirts that I made from the linen I bought of Mariann, and perhaps there is a present from our uncle in America; but if he had any thing decent, would he have gone first to the coal-burner in the forest? Ah, no! he would have shown himself in the village.”
Barefoot had time for these reflections, for the sack was truly artistically knotted together. Her usual skill and patience alone succeeded, at last, in loosening it. She took out all that was in the sack, and with an angry glance said to herself,—
“Oh! thou good-for-nothing! There is not a whole shirt in the sack; and now you can take your choice, to be called ‘Beggar-man,’ or ‘Rag-man.’”
This was not a good disposition in which, for the first time, to meet her brother; and this Dami felt, for he stood waiting at the door of the hut till she had put every thing back into the sack; then he stepped up to her, and said, “God bless thee, Amrie! I bring you nothing but dirty clothes; but you are neat, and will soon—”
“Oh! dear Dami, how you look!” shrieked Amrie, and lay upon his breast; but quickly she tore herself away, and said,—“In heaven’s name, you smell of brandy! Oh! have you come to that?”
“No! Mathew gave me a little spirit of juniper, for I could no longer stand. It has gone ill with me, but I am not bad. This you may believe, although I cannot prove it.”
“I believe you! You would not deceive the only person there is left to believe you. Oh, how wild and miserable you look! What a beard you have got. I cannot suffer that. That must come off. But you are well? Nothing is the matter with you?”
“Yes, I am well—and will go for a soldier.”