“You’re reproaching me now for feeding upon you.”

“No, I didn’t mean that.  Don’t be so touchy all the time—­always standing there as if to say:  ’Who’s going to do anything for me, good or bad?’ Strike about for yourself.”

“That’s just what I am going to do, and I shall strike with a good swing,” said Damie.

For a long time he would not state what his real intention was; but he walked through the village with his head singularly erect and spoke freely to everybody; he worked diligently in the forest with the woodcutters, having his father’s ax and with it almost the bodily strength of him who had swung it so sturdily in the days that were gone.

One evening in the early part of the spring, when Barefoot met him on his way back from Mossbrook Wood, he asked, taking the ax from his shoulder and holding it up before her: 

“Where do you think this is going?”

“Into the forest,” answered Barefoot.  “But it won’t go alone—­there must be a chopper.”

“You are right; but it’s going to its brother—­and one will chop on this side and another will chop on that side, and then the trees crash and roar like cannons, and still you will hear nothing of it—­and yet you may, if you wish to, but no one else in this place.”

“I don’t understand one peck of all your bushel,” answered Barefoot.  “Speak out—­I’m too old to guess riddles now.”

“Well, I’m going to uncle in America.”

“Indeed?  Going to start to-day?” said Barefoot, laughing.  “Do you remember how Martin, the mason’s boy, once called up to his mother through the window:  ’Mother, throw me out a clean pocket-handkerchief—­I’m going to America!’ Those who were going to fly so quickly are all still here.”

“You’ll see how much longer I shall be here,” said Damie; and without another word he went into Coaly Mathew’s house.

Barefoot felt like laughing at Damie’s ridiculous plan, but she could not; she felt that there was some meaning in it.  And that very night, when everybody was in bed, she went to her brother and declared once for all that she would not go with him.  She thought thus to conquer him; but Damie replied quickly: 

“I’m not tied to you!” and became the more confirmed in his plan.

Then there suddenly welled up in the girl’s mind once more all that flood of reflections that had come upon her once in her childhood; but this time she did not ask advice of the tree, as if it could have answered her.  All her deliberations brought her to this one conclusion:  “He’s right in going, and I’m right, too, in staying here.”  She felt inwardly glad that Damie could make such a bold resolve—­at any rate, it showed manly determination.  And although she felt a deep sorrow at the thought of being henceforth alone in the wide world, she nevertheless thought it right that her brother should thrust forth his hand thus boldly and independently.