When they rose from the table, the farmer said shortly:
“Get your bundle! I shall have to lose more time with you, until I have found a place for you, for surely no one will want you.”
Since the night before a change had taken place in Sami. He no longer hung his head, as he had done almost always before from fear; he lifted it up and said:
“I know already where I must go.”
The farmer and his wife looked at each other in astonishment.
“I want to go over the mountains,” he added.
“Yes, that is best, that he should go back there, where he came from,” said the farmer’s wife quickly; “there will no doubt be someone going over there from the inn. Go quickly with him up there.”
This seemed right to the farmer also. The leave-taking was as short as possible, and Sami was light-hearted when he started with his little bundle on his back away from his cousins’ house.
At the inn, sure enough, they found a driver who was going with a big wood-wagon to Château d’Æux. He was ready to take the boy with him and thought he would be able to find someone to take him farther, if the boy knew his way down there on the French side. The farmer said Sami had been brought up there and wanted to go back, he knew where.
Now the driver was ready. Sami’s bundle was thrown into the wagon and the boy seated on it.