Barefoot had plenty of time to indulge in these reflections; for the sack had been tied with a cord, which had been knotted in a most complicated way, and it required all her patience and skill to disentangle it.  She emptied out everything that was in the sack and said with angry eyes: 

“Oh, you good-for-nothing!  There’s not a decent shirt left!  Now you may have your choice whether you’ll be called ‘Jack in Tatters’ or ’Tattered Jack.’”

This was not a happy frame of mind in which to greet her brother for the first time.  And Damie seemed to realize this; for he stood at the entrance of the log cabin and looked on, until Barefoot had put everything back into the sack.  Then he stepped up to her and said: 

“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.”

Barefoot could hardly help laughing when there came again and again, as the burden of his story,—­“And then they turned me out into the street.”  She could not help interrupting him with: 

“Yes, that’s just how you are, and how you used to be, even as a child.  When you once stumbled, you let yourself fall like a log of wood; one must convert the stumble into a hop, as the old proverb says.  Cheer up.  Do you know what one must do, when people try to hurt one?”