Barefoot received permission from her employers to accompany her brother when he went to town to conclude the arrangement for his passage with the agent. Greatly were both of them astonished when they learned, on arriving at the office, that this had already been done. The Village Council had already taken the necessary steps, and Damie was to have his rights and corresponding obligations as one of the village poor. On board the ship, before it sailed out into the wide ocean, he would have to sign a paper, attesting his embarkation, and not until then would the money be paid.
The brother and sister returned sorrowfully to the village. Damie had been seized with a fit of his old despondency, because a thing had now to be carried out which he himself had wished. And Barefoot herself felt deeply grieved at the thought that her brother was, in a way, to be expelled from his native land. At the boundary-line Damie said aloud to the sign-post, on which the name of the village and of the district were painted:
"You there! I don't belong to you any longer, and all the people who live here are no more to me than you are."
Barefoot started to cry; but she resolved within herself that this should be the last time until her brother's departure, and until he was fairly gone. And she kept her word to herself.
The people in the village said that Barefoot had no heart, because her eyes were not wet when her brother went away. People like to see tears actually shed—for what do they care about those that are shed in secret? But Barefoot was calm and brave.
Only during the last days before Damie set out did she for the first time fail in her duty; for she neglected her work by being with Damie all the time. She let Rose upbraid her for it, and merely said: "You are right." But still she ran after her brother everywhere—she did not want to lose a minute of his company as long as he was there. She very likely felt that she might be able to do something special for him at any moment, or say something special that would be of use to him all his life; and she was vexed with herself for finding nothing but quite ordinary things to say, and for even quarreling with him sometimes.
Oh, these hours of parting! How they oppress the heart! How all the past and all the future seem crowded together into one moment, and one knows not how to set about anything rightly, and only a look or a touch must tell all that is felt!
Still Amrei found good words to speak. When she counted out her brother's stock of linen she said:
"These are good, respectable shirts—keep yourself respectable and good in them."
And when she packed everything into the big sack, on which her father's name was still to be seen, she said: