if he had a fatherly hand to guide him—­it would help him up.  But why do you want anybody else, Amrei?—­can you not take care of him yourself, if it be necessary?  If he once starts out in that way, I can see that he’ll be nothing but a servant all his life, a drudge for other people.  And who knows how uncle’s children will behave toward us?  Because they’re poor people themselves, they’ll play the masters with us.  No, no!  I’m sure they’re good,—­and it would be a fine thing to be able to say:  ’Good morning, cousin.’  If uncle had only brought one of the children with him, I could decide much better—­I could find out about things.  Oh, good heavens, how difficult all this is!”

Amrei sat down by the tree.  A chaffinch came hopping along, picked up a seed, looked around him, and flew away.  Something crept across Amrei’s face; she brushed it off—­it was a ladybird.  She let it creep about on her hand, between the mountains and valleys of her fingers, until it came to the tip of her little-finger and flew away.

“What a tale he’ll have to tell about where he has been!” thought Amrei.  “A little creature like that is well off indeed—­wherever it flies, it is at home.  How the larks are singing!  They, too, are well off—­they do not have to think what they ought to say and do.  Yonder the butcher, with his dog, is driving a calf out of the village.  The dog’s voice is quite different from the lark’s—­but then a lark’s singing would never drive a calf along.”

“Where’s the colt going?” Coaly Mathew called out of his window to a young lad who was leading a fine colt away by a halter.

“Farmer Rodel has sold it,” was the reply; and presently the colt was heard neighing farther down the valley.  Amrei, who had heard this, again reflected: 

“Yes, a creature like that can be sold away from its mother, and the mother hardly knows of it; and whoever pays for it, to him it belongs.  But a person cannot be sold, and he who is unwilling cannot be led away by a halter.  Yonder comes Farmer Rodel and his horses, with a large colt frisking beside them.  You will be put in harness soon, colt, and perhaps you, too, will be sold.  A man cannot be bought—­he merely hires himself out.  An animal for its work gets nothing more than its food and drink, while a person gets money as a reward.  Yes, I can be a maid now, and with my wages I can apprentice Damie—­he wants to be a mason.  But when we are at uncle’s, Damie won’t be as much mine as he is now.  Hark! the starling is flying home to the house which father made for him—­he’s singing merrily again.  Father made the house for him out of old planks.  I remember his saying that a starling won’t go into a house if it’s made of new wood, and I feel just the same.  ’You, tree,—­now I know—­if you rustle as long as I stay here, I shall remain.’” And Amrei listened intently; soon it seemed to her as if the tree were rustling, but again when she looked up at the branches they were quite still, and she did not know what it was she heard.