Barefoot
said nothing about this thought to Damie, who seemed cheerful and of
good courage. Black Marianne, especially, continued to urge him strongly
to go; for she would have been glad to send the whole village away to
foreign parts, if only she could at last get tidings of her John. And
now she had firmly taken up the notion that he had sailed across the
seas. Crappy Zachy had indeed told her, that the reason she could not
cry any more was because the ocean, the great salty deep, absorbed the
tears which one might be disposed to shed for one who was on the other
shore.
Barefoot received permission from her employers to accompany her brother
when he went to town to conclude the arrangement for his passage with
the agent. Greatly were both of them astonished when they learned, on
arriving at the office, that this had already been done. The Village
Council had already taken the necessary steps, and Damie was to have his
rights and corresponding obligations as one of the village poor. On
board the ship, before it sailed out into the wide ocean, he would have
to sign a paper, attesting his embarkation, and not until then would the
money be paid.
The brother and sister returned sorrowfully to the village. Damie had
been seized with a fit of his old despondency, because a thing had now
to be carried out which he himself had wished. And Barefoot herself felt
deeply grieved at the thought that her brother was, in a way, to be
expelled from his native land.
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