Without another word Barefoot left the Court-house with Damie, who actually shed tears because she had compelled him to return to the village to no purpose.  It would have been better, he declared, if he had remained out in the woods and spared himself the jeering, and the humiliation of hearing himself banished as a stranger from his native place.  Barefoot wanted to reply that it was better to know the worst, however bitter it might be; but she restrained herself, realizing that she had need of all her strength to keep up her own courage.  She felt as if she had been banished with her brother, and understood that she had to fight with a world that had law and might to fall back upon, while she herself was empty-handed and helpless.

But she bore up more bravely than ever; she did not allow Damie’s weaknesses and adversities to weigh upon her.  For that is the way with people; if any one has a pain of his own which entirely occupies him, he will bear a second pain—­be it ever so severe—­more easily than if he had this second pain alone to bear.  And thus while Barefoot had a feeling of indescribable sorrow against which she could do nothing, she was able to bear the definite trial against which she could strive, the more willingly and freely.  She allowed herself not a minute more for dreaming, and went to and fro with stiff arms and clinched fists, as if to say:  “Where is there work to do?  Be it ever so hard, I will gladly undertake it, if only I can get myself and my brother out of this state of forsaken dependency.”

She now cherished the idea of going with Damie to Alsace, and working in a factory there.  It seemed terrible to her that she should have to do this, but she would force herself to it; as soon as the summer was over, she would go.  And then, “Farewell home,” she said, “for we are strangers even here where we were born.”

The one protector the two orphans had had on the Village Council was now powerless to do anything for them; old Farmer Rodel was taken seriously ill, and in the night following the stormy meeting he died.  Barefoot and Black Marianne were the two people who wept the most at his burial in the churchyard.  On the way home Black Marianne gave as a special reason for this fact that old Farmer Rodel had been the last survivor of those with whom she had danced in her youth.  “And now,” she said, “my last partner is dead.”

But she soon spoke a very different elegy concerning him; for it appeared that Farmer Rodel, who had for years been raising Barefoot’s hopes concerning his will, made no mention at all of her in that document—­far less did he leave her anything.

When Black Marianne went on with an endless tirade of scolding and complaining, Barefoot said: 

“It’s all coming at once.  The sky is cloudy now, and the hail is beating down upon me from all sides; but the sun will soon be shining again.”

The relatives of Farmer Rodel gave Barefoot a few garments that had belonged to the old man; she would have liked to refuse them, but realized that it would not do to show a spirit of obstinacy just now.  At first Damie also refused to accept the clothes, but he was finally obliged to give in; he seemed fated to pass his life in the clothes of various dead people.