“You know Strong Ingmar, I suppose?” said Gabriel.

“Oh, yes,” young Ingmar replied.  “We used to be good friends in the old days.”

“Is it true that he understands magic?” asked Gunhild.

“Well—­no!” Ingmar answered rather hesitatingly, as if half-believing it himself.

“You may as well tell us what you know,” persisted Gunhild.

“The schoolmaster says we mustn’t believe in such things.”

“The schoolmaster can’t prevent a person seeing what he sees and believing what he knows,” Gabriel declared.

Ingmar wanted to tell them all about his home; memories of his childhood came back to him at sight of the old place.  “I can tell you about something that I saw once,” he said.  “It happened one winter when father and Strong Ingmar were up in the forest working at the kiln.  When Christmas came around, Strong Ingmar offered to tend the kiln by himself, so that father could come home for the holidays.  The day before Christmas, mother sent me up to the forest with a basket of good fare for Strong Ingmar.  I started early, so as to be there before the midday dinner hour.  When I came up, father and Strong Ingmar had just finished drawing a kiln, and all the charcoal had been spread on the ground to cool.  It was still smoking and, where the coals lay thickest, it was ready to take fire, which is something that must not happen.  To prevent that is the most important part of the entire process of charcoal making.  Therefore, father said as soon as he saw me:  ’I’m afraid you’ll have to go home alone, little Ingmar.  I can’t leave Strong Ingmar with all this work.’  Strong Ingmar walked along the side of the heap where the smoke rose thickest.  ‘You can go, Big Ingmar,’ he said.  ‘I’ve managed worse things than this.’  In a little while the smoke grew less.  ’Now let’s see what kind of a Christmas treat Brita has sent me,’ said Strong Ingmar, taking the basket from me.  ‘Come, let me show you what a fine house we’ve got here.’  Then he took me into the hut where he and father lived.  At the back was a rude stone, and the other walls were made up of branches of spruce and blackthorn.  ’Well, my lad, you never guessed that your father had a royal castle like this in the forest, eh?’ said Strong Ingmar.  ‘Here are walls that keep out both storm and frost,’ he laughed, thrusting his arm clean through the spruce branches.

“Soon father came in laughing.  He and the old man were black with soot and reeking with the odour of sour charcoal smoke.  But never had I seen father so happy and full of fun.  Neither of them could stand upright in the hut, and the only furniture in the place were two bunks made of spruce twigs and a couple of flat stones on which they had built a fire; yet they were perfectly contented.  They sat down, side by side, on one of the bunks, and opened the basket.  ’I don’t know whether you can have any of this,’ said Strong Ingmar to father, ‘for it’s my Christmas dinner, you know.’  ’Seeing it’s Christmas Eve you must be a good to me,’ said father.  ’At a time like this I suppose it would never do to let a poor old charcoal burner starve,’ Strong Ingmar then said.