was nothing in a coat after all, and that
it did not matter in the least who had once worn it.

Coaly Mathew, who lived not far from Black Marianne, took Damie as his
assistant at tree-felling and charcoal-burning. This solitary life
pleased Damie best; for he only wanted to wait until the time came when
he could be a soldier, and then he would enter the army as a substitute
and remain a soldier all his life. For in a soldier's life there is
justice and order, and no one has brothers and sisters, and no one has
his own house, and a man is provided with clothing and meat and drink;
and if there should be a war, why a brave soldier's death is after all
the best.

Such were the sentiments that Damie expressed one Sunday in Mossbrook
Wood, when Barefoot came out to the charcoal-burner's to bring her
brother yeast, and meal, and tobacco. She wanted to show him how--in
addition to the general charcoal-burner's fare, which consists of bread
baked with yeast--he might make the dumplings he prepared for himself
taste better. But Damie would not listen to her; he said he preferred to
have them just as they were--he rather liked to swallow bad food when he
might have had better; and altogether, he derived a kind of satisfaction
from self-neglect, until he should some day be decked out as a soldier.

Barefoot fought against this continual looking forward to a future time,
and this loss of time in the present. She was always wanting to put some
life into Damie, who rather enjoyed being indolent and pitying himself.
Indeed, he seemed to find a sort of satisfaction in his downward course,
for it gave him an opportunity to pity himself to his heart's content,
and did not require him to make any physical exertion. With great
difficulty Barefoot managed to prevail so far that he at least bought an
ax of his own out of his earnings; and it was his father's ax, which
Coaly Mathew had bought at the auction in the old days.

Barefoot often came back out of the Wood in profound despair, but this
state of mind never lasted long. Her inward confidence in herself, and
the natural cheerfulness that was in her, involuntarily burst forth from
her lips in song; and anybody who did not know her, would never have
thought that Barefoot either had a care then, or ever had had one in all
her life.

The satisfaction arising from the feeling that she was sturdily and
untiringly doing her duty, and acting as a Samaritan to Black Marianne
and Damie, imp