"God greet you, Amrei! I bring you nothing but dirty clothes, but you are neat, and will make me—"
"Oh, dear Damie, how you look!" cried Barefoot, and she threw herself on his neck. But she quickly tore herself away from him, exclaiming:
"For Heaven's sake! You smell of whisky! Have you got so far already?"
"No, Coaly Mathew only gave me a little juniper spirit, for I could not stand up any longer. Things have gone badly with me, but I have not taken to drink—you may believe that, though, to be sure, I can't prove it."
"I believe you, for you surely would not wish to deceive the only one you have on earth! But oh, how wild and miserable you look! You have a beard as heavy as a knife-grinder's. I won't allow that—you must shave it off. But you're in good health? There's nothing the matter with you?"
"I am in good health, and intend to be a soldier."
"What you are, and what you are to be, we'll think about in good time.
But now tell me how things have gone with you."
Damie kicked his foot against a half-burnt log of wood—one of the spoilt logs, as they were called—and said:
"Look you—I am just like that, not completely turned to coal, and yet no longer fresh wood."
Barefoot exhorted him to say what he had to say without complaints. And then Damie went off into a long, long story, setting forth how he had not been able to bear the life at his uncle's, and how hard-hearted and selfish that uncle was, and especially how his wife had grudged him every bit he ate in the house, and how he had got work here and there, but how in every place he had only experienced a little more of man's hard-heartedness. "In America," he said, "one can see another person perishing in misery, and never so much as look around at him."