In the forest, too, it was the same—­the path lined with silver hangings on either side, and webs of silver here and there along the way.

“Spiders bring luck, so they say,” thought Olof.

“Well, at any rate, they’re showing me the road this morning.”

And he strode on briskly, eager to begin.

“To-day’s the test,” he thought.  “All depends on how I manage now.  If it goes well, then I can do what I will.  But if I’ve lost my strength and will these years between, then—­why, I don’t know where to turn.”

Eagerly, impatiently, he hurried on, trembling with expectation, and sweating at the brow.

“Maybe I’m taking it too seriously,” he thought again.  “But, no—­it is life or death to me, this.  And I don’t know yet what I can do—­it may go either way....”

He swung the axe in a wide circle from the shoulder, held it out at arm’s length, then straight above his head, and swung it to either side.  It weighed as lightly as a leaf, and he felt a childish delight—­as if he had already passed the first test.

* * * * *

He reached the place at last—­a hillside covered with tall, straight-stemmed fir and pine.  He flung down coat and hat, never heeding where, glanced up along the stem he had chosen, then the axe was lifted, and the steel sank deep into the red wood—­it was his first stroke in his native forest after six years’ absence.

The forest answered with a ringing echo from three sides, so loud and strong that Olof checked his second stroke in mid-air, and turned in wonder to see who was there.

And the trees faced him with lifted head and untroubled brow, without nod or smile, but with the greeting of stern men bidding welcome.

“Hei!” Olof answered with a stroke of the axe.

And so they talked together, in question and answer and dispute....

“What am I working out here all alone for?” said Olof.  “Why, ’tis this way....”  And with the red-brown fir chips flying all around him, he told them the story.

“So that’s it?  Well, good luck to you,” answered the trees, and fell, one after another, till the earth rang and the echoes answered far through the forest.

Olof felt himself aglow with an inward fire that flamed the more as he gave it way in ringing strokes of the axe.  He counted it a point of honour to strip each branch off clean at a single blow, be it never so thick....  And the more he worked the happier he grew.

He was trying to win back the years in which he had never held an axe.

* * * * *

By noon, he stood in the middle of a clearing already.

“Well, how does it feel?” asked the trees, as he sat down, with his jacket slung over his shoulders, hastily eating the meal he had brought with him.

“None so bad—­hope for the best,” he answered.

Again the axe flashed, the branches shivered, and the earth rang.  “Bit crooked, that one,” said Olof to himself; “but I can use it all the same—­do for a piece between the windows.”