“One must keep out of their way.”

“No, one must hurt them, if one can—­and one hurts them most by standing up and achieving something.  But you always stand there and say to the world:  ’Do what you like to me, good or bad; kiss me or beat me, just as you will.’  That’s easy enough; you let people do anything to you, and then pity yourself.  I should like it right well myself, if some one would place me here and there, and do everything for me.  But you must look out for yourself now.  You’ve let yourself be pushed about quite enough in the world; now you must play the master for awhile.”

Reproof and teaching often seem like hardness and injustice in the eyes of the unhappy; and Damie took his sister’s words as such.  It was dreadful that she did not see that he was the most unhappy creature on earth.  She strongly urged him not to believe that, and said that if he did not believe it, it would not be so.  But it is the most difficult of all undertakings to inspire a man with confidence in himself; most people acquire it only after they have succeeded.

Damie declared that he would not tell his heartless sister a word more; and it was only after some time that she got from him a detailed account of his travels and fortunes, and of how he had at last come back to the old world as a stoker on a steamboat.  While she reproved him for his self-tormenting touchiness, she became conscious that she herself was not entirely free from that fault.  For, as a result of her almost exclusive association with Black Marianne, she had fallen into the habit of thinking and talking so much about herself, that she had acquired a desponding way.  And now that she was called upon to cheer her brother up, she unconsciously exerted a similar influence upon herself.  For herein lies the mysterious power of cooperation among men, that when we help others we are also helping ourselves.

“We have four sound hands,” she said in conclusion, “and we’ll see if we cannot fight our way through the world together.  And to fight your way through is a thousand times better than to beg your way through.  And now, Damie, come with me—­come home.”

Damie did not want to show himself in the village at all; he dreaded the jeering that would be vented upon him from all sides, and preferred to remain concealed for the present.  But Barefoot said: 

“You go with me now—­on this bright Sunday; and you must walk right through the village, and let the people mock at you, let them have their say, let them point and laugh.  Then you’ll be through with it, then it will be over, and you will have swallowed their bitter draught all at once, and not drop by drop.”

Not without long and obstinate resistance, not until Coaly Mathew had interfered and sided with Barefoot, was Damie induced to comply.  And there was, indeed, a perfect hailstorm of jeering, sometimes coarse, sometimes satirical, directed at Barefoot’s Damie, whom people accused of having taken merely a pleasure-trip to America at the expense of the parish.