Evening has come of the day on which the fight had raged so fiercely at Tammisto. The brothers sit in their cabin; they have anointed and bound up their wounds as well as they could. Night, black and everlasting, reigns in their thoughts, and their angry glance is directed downward at the floor. They think of what they have done and know the punishment that threatens them; they ponder over their unhappy, hopeless situation, and the silence in the room is awful. Finally Simeoni started the following conversation.

SIMEONI. Brothers, brothers! say a word. What are we to do to escape the clutches of the law?

AAPO. Ah! there is not a single road of escape left to us out of this fix, not one.

JUHANI. We’re trapped now, trapped! All is lost, all hope and happiness!

TUOMAS. The Devill’ll get us without any mercy; so let us take what we have earned with eyes shut. We disturbed a Crown Servant in the midst of his hurry, and that’s a serious thing; we made men into cripples perhaps, and that’s a worse thing. Ha! maybe we even knocked the dear life out of someone, and then all’s well; we’ll be shut up and can eat the Crown’s carefree bread.

SIMEONI. Oh we poor boys!

TIMO. Poor sons of Jukola. And seven of them! What shall we do now?

LAURI. I know what I’ll do.

JUHANI. I do too. Knife to throat, every man of us!

TIMO. For God’s sake!

JUHANI. My knife, my shining knife! I’ll let blood in waves!

AAPO. Juhani!

JUHANI. Let the blood of seven men flow into one single pool and let us drown together in this Red Sea, like every man-jack in the Old Testament once did. Where’s my birch-handled knife that shall atone for all?

AAPO. Calm thyself!

JUHANI. Away out of my way, thou, and away out of this accursed life! My knife!

SIMEONI. Hold him!

AAPO. To me, brothers!

JUHANI. Out of the way!

TUOMAS. Steady, my lad!

JUHANI. Let go, brother Tuomas!

TUOMAS. Sittest thou down quietly.

JUHANI. What good will quietness do us when all is lost? Art thou minded to take forty brace of fresh birch-rods quietly?

TUOMAS. I’m not.

JUHANI. What wilt thou do?

TUOMAS. I’ll hang myself, but not before.

JUHANI. Let’s do now what we shall have to do in the end.

TUOMAS. Let’s think it over first.

JUHANI. Ha-ha! It’s all no use.

TUOMAS. We don’t know yet exactly.

JUHANI. The law’s waiting to lay its gloves on us.

SIMEONI. Let’s leave Finland and go as herds to Ingermanland!

TIMO. Or as doorkeepers to St. Petersburg town.

AAPO. These are childish ideas.

EERO. Away off to sea to cleave the waves like our grand old uncle used to! Once we get away from the Finnish coast we are free from the hand of the law, and can then try to reach the Englishman; a man’s worth something in the masts of his ships.

AAPO. There’s advice worth thinking over.

TUOMAS. It might perhaps be that, but remember: before we could reach the coast, we’d most likely have the Crown’s engagement-rings on our wrists.

TIMO. Aah! Even if we get away from Finland with whole skins, when should we be in England? It’s millions and thousands of millions of miles there. Ah!

AAPO. Listen to a word: let’s join the wolves ourselves, and it’s little we need fear their teeth. Let’s march to the army and enlist for a few years. Ah! it’s a hard way out, but still perhaps the best in this mess. Ay, let us set out for that famous and great big battalion at Heinola, that marches and drills all summer on Parola Plain. This is an idea worth weighing, seeing that the Crown looks after its own.

JUHANI. I’m afraid, brother, thou hast found the only way. The barracks have saved many a wild lad from prison before this. Think of Karila’s farm-hand, that great rogue, who once got it into his head to thrash his master a little; it would have gone ill with him, if the rascal hadn’t suddenly had a grey coat on his back which saved him. Let that be settled! And now off to barracks! Why, our father’s uncle died in the wars, the Kyrö War, where they say a five-fathom log floated in blood. Our own uncle too died in the wars, fell on the coast in North Finland; and so it has gone with many another, both kinsfolk and neighbours. We too know how to fall, to fall like devout heroes. Better death, better to be in Heaven than here amongst such wild beasts of men. I can’t help crying. Ay, much better there than here. Ay, ay, much better.

TUOMAS. Brother, in this way thou canst set us all wiping our eyes.

SIMEONI. O Lord, look down upon us and let the sun of Thy mercy shine!

And their conversation ended in tears, in a general, choking fit of weeping; not a single eye remained dry. But the evening drew on, night came, and from weeping they all sank at last into a deep sleep. The next day they took up the matter again and sought, sweating, some plan that might save them, and meanwhile their eyes kept close watch on their surroundings, in order that any approach of the forces of the Crown might be observed in time. Thus they kept watch and pondered; and the barracks, though dreadful enough, began to seem the likeliest sanctuary. They decided therefore to set off together to Heinola and to enlist for six years. And when the next day dawned, they embarked on their long journey with downcast minds and troubled hearts. They strode on forgetting that, for their purpose, passports and parish reports were necessary; strode on, first towards Jukola, meaning to beg the tanner to take charge of their animal friends and to keep an eye on the cabin.

Reaching the Viertola road, they met the Sheriff, who, with his man seated behind him, drove rumbling towards them. The brothers were taken aback, believing his errand to concern them. They were on the point of running away, but then stepped forward, sure in the belief that no two men would ever be able to arrest them. They were mistaken, however, regarding his errand; other matters had set the Sheriff driving round the parish. Moreover, he was a fine fellow, brave, high-minded and always merry. He had ever listened with joy to all that was told about the Jukola brothers and their life in the forest; and he was their well-wisher, a friend and not an enemy. And now, having come up with the brothers, he began in a pleasant voice:

THE SHERIFF. Good-day, good-day! Whither away with such long faces? Answer me, and don’t look at me like that, like backwoods wolves. Whither away, with those knapsacks?

JUHANI. We have a long journey before us.

THE SHERIFF. Is it to Hell ye’re off then? Hey?

JUHANI. Do you want anything of us?

THE SHERIFF. What would you have to give me? A man can ask without wanting to buy. Well, well, your eyes are glowering and glaring at me; if I wasn’t used to looking the Devil himself in the face, my heart might even start beating. Ha-ha-ha! What the blazes is the matter with you?

JUHANI. One thing I ask you: will it be a Crown job?

THE SHERIFF. Will what?

JUHANI. Hm. That, that.

THE SHERIFF. What, thou tousled-headed loon? What?

JUHANI. That shindy at Tammisto Farm.

THE SHERIFF. Ahaa! That game the other day. Ay, there’s something I want to say to you about that now.

JUHANI. Was anyone killed?

THE SHERIFF. Thank thy luck that there wasn’t. But, thunder and lightning! you drove away a Crown Servant from his work and even upset his desk, think what that means.

JUHANI. God ha’ mercy! It’s just what we have thought about a lot, and have come to realize what it means for us. Ay, the Devil’ll get us, and so we have chosen the Devil’s part. Know that it is to Parola’s big battalion that our road now leads uphill and down so that the sand rings. There’s the last pass to which we can flee in our danger and distress, what with people, those raving devils, worrying us on every side as though we were young wolves in a trap. We’re off to Parola! and woe betide the man who tries to stop us; for the Crown needs men, war is brewing, so we have heard. Soon we shall wear the Crown’s armour, and touch us then, if you dare, you Satans. Hii, haa! I could bite the world in two, bite it in two like an eel; a bit more and I’d weep for very rage and sorrow; weep and shake my fist. We’re off to Parola! There’s men like young ravens there at Parola.

THE SHERIFF. You owls and boobies! would you leave your own cabin on your own soil and go off to the whizzing rods at the barracks?

JUHANI. Better there anyhow than quarrying rock in prison; and as for that, the brown skin of a Häme man is an inch thick, as they will see.

THE SHERIFF. Quarrying rock in prison! Why?

JUHANI. You yourself, sir, are minded to drag us there in clanking chains. And why? Because of that unlucky tussle in Tammisto yard, because we dusted the backs of those Toukola lads a little, a dusting which, God help us, we were thoroughly egged on to give. And now the idea is to make a Crown job of it, make a bull of a fly, as the proverb says.

THE SHERIFF. Now thou liest! Go to Hades, man! I have other and more serious work than that.

JUHANI. Even if you were to grant us the freedom to go to Hades, which we do not believe, the Toukola men are still at our throats with the law behind them. We unlucky lads struck the first blow, and that makes our case bad; but they won’t either escape without ‘pay up, please’. There are wounds enough on our side too, on which the scab has scarce had time to form, and they prove something, these wounds do. Hrrh! But even if we hold our own against the Toukola men, there’s still a day of judgment awaiting us every year: Bible-reading Day. The Devil! I say like Paavo Jaakkola, that fine lad: ‘This life would suit me if it had one day a year less, if it wasn’t for that accursed Bible-reading Day.’ And he also said: ‘It isn’t the pain, but the shame,’ as he did once after one of those hair-pulling feasts, in which his own crop had been badly milled again. And what happened to him the next year at the same feast? Ay, the parson made him sit under the table like an owl in full view of his young and pretty sweetheart, who stood in the porch; she fainted when she saw it, the poor body, tumbled head over heels on the floor like a young duck. It was a sad case; after that Paavo took to drink, was refused by his sweetheart and drank all the harder, and ended his days as a miserable knacker. That was bonny Paavo’s end, a man by no means thick-headed, indeed not, for he was one of the wisest and deftest of men; only his stepmother had surlily thrust the book upon him in the beginning, and so reading-day became a day of terror for him. And is this either a right state of things? Mikko Kukkoinen, a man big and stout as a chopping-block, broad in the cheek like old mother Tuhkala’s cat, but not what you would call a good reader, shied like a lamb when he heard in his tool-shed the sound of the parson’s sleigh-bells on reading-day. So awful is this day, this feast of sweating and hair-pulling. And once we too will be taken there by force at the rector’s command, and from there to the scaffold of shame, the stocks; but from all this the grey coat of the Crown can save us, to all this we now say an eternal farewell.

THE SHERIFF. You brainless goats, what fool’s plans are you hatching? Well, go, go, march on as far as the Crown’s sandy field will take you. What in fury have I to do with it! Our reckoning is discharged as regards Tammisto, that I say and will swear to, you loons! Discharged! and even the mouths of the Toukola men are stopped. Ho! I did that the same day the fight took place, as soon as I was satisfied that no lives had been lost. The rogues threatened to have the law of you, though they had boiled the soup themselves. But then I put my own weight in the scales, and the Toukola men shut up like moles; I have a good many hooks of my own fast in them with which I could drag them into a tight fix. And now they are silent and hold good with what they have got. And as for your matter with the rector, I only ask you: has he troubled you lately in any way?

AAPO. That he has not done, to our great wonder.

THE SHERIFF. And never will any more; remember who says it. For who brought this about? Who other than that old Sheriff of ours? And you, you ungrateful imps, you now say that he has evil designs on you. Somehow, I’ve been foolish enough to be tickled by the life you young cubs lead. Ha-ha-ha! Well, well, always room for a joke, a clean joke. But let this be clear: peace be with you on my part and on the rector’s part as well; he has begun to understand that a coat can’t be made out of birch-bark. Well then, there’s no danger at all, boys, none at all, although you do deserve a good thrashing, you confounded mules. But go home now! At once! say I. Ay, ay, left turn there, left turn and quick march home, Impivaara Company! Home, you rascals, and God be with you. Gee-up, White-mane!

So saying, he jerked at the reins, and the Sheriff’s white-maned gelding, famous all over the parish, broke into a trot. Rattling they sped away; the hat of the Sheriff’s Man on the back seat shook, and the dust rose in clouds behind them. And like seven images of salt, the brothers stood by the roadside, watching this departure. Silent and wondering what to think of it all, they stood and stared after the cart until it was lost to view in a turn of the road.

TIMO. How the Sheriff’s Man has aged since we last saw him in Kuokkala woods with our mother and all the village folk!

JUHANI. What dost thou, Aapo, think of this fine speech of the Sheriff’s?

AAPO. I should think him an honest man and that he spoke from an honest heart, but let us be on our guard, for there’s no trusting gentle-folk.

JUHANI. We’ll keep ready to gallop off to the wolves’ home. The Devil’s in him, he’s trying to entice us into a trap.

TUOMAS. He wants to fool us into going back home, ready for him when he comes back from Viertola with a crowd of men, for everyone knows it isn’t wise to pounce on Jukola’s troop without enough men. He’ll come back and collar us nicely if we go home and wait for him.

JUHANI. Ha! that’s what I think too. He’s out hunting, out on a mighty chase, and we are the game he is after. Very likely terrible things have happened, things from which even the barracks couldn’t save us. And now there’s nothing left for us but to become outlaws and make off into the woods at once! Off the highway, lads!

AAPO. Ah! what are we to do?

JUHANI. Everything’s done already; here are seven bandits. But let us try to be as kind, as merciful robbers as we can, and always ask politely beforehand for something to still our hunger with; ay, and then if kind words won’t help, we can try force, though even then we can stop short of bloodshed and murder. Let’s go now.

SIMEONI. Juhani, Juhani, what art thou saying?

AAPO. Ah! where are we wretched brothers to find shelter?

JUHANI. Where bandits do! Let’s move on.

TUOMAS. Hold thy jaw, thou raving madman! I’d sooner march to the eternal colds of Siberia than eat a robber’s bread. Thou maniac, wert thou in earnest, or was it only a senseless joke? What am I to think of thee?

JUHANI. Oh brother! this meeting has addled my brains, and I hardly know what I say or do. The Sheriff was here and vanished again in wind and cloud; but that seems long ago to me. It was long ago, long ago! Yonder he vanished, where my thumb points, like Tinder-Matti’s thumb. Vanished in smoke, and in the midst of the smoke the white mane of a war-horse flickered. But that was long ago, long ago!

TUOMAS. There now!

AAPO. What now, what now?

TUOMAS. You see, brothers, that even Juhani isn’t always to be shot from the branch on which he seems to be sitting.

LAURI. What art thou rolling thy eyes and twitching thy head and breathing through thy nostrils for like that? Ay, I will say. Be thankful that thy brains are sound.

TUOMAS. Ay, let him hide his foolishness as best he can. But what the Hell are we to do? Say, Aapo.

AAPO. I don’t know.

EERO. Listen, brothers. We don’t know yet for certain whether the Sheriff had a fox up his sleeve or not.

LAURI. I believe he had not; for I looked him carefully in the eye and there was no treachery there. And think it over. Why should he have come all this way without assistants, when there were villages and farms enough on his path? Why should he go past Impivaara right to Viertola Manor, where he has less help to expect than in the big villages he has left behind him? Strange! Then from Viertola he would come all this long way back with a crowd of men to our cabin. Nonsense! This doesn’t fit together with the wise and cunning ideas our Sheriff has always had.

AAPO. It doesn’t seem to, that I too can see, but still we mustn’t trust him too much. Thou believest that thou hast thought out a matter real cleverly, yet it often happens, it’s often the case, that the truth is just the opposite to what the best and wisest brain had made out. And we have cause to be afraid. Our crime is great in the eyes of the law, very great; and remember how very, how exceedingly friendly the Sheriff was towards us.

TUOMAS. It wasn’t the language of truth, but gall boiled under its honey. But what are we to do now?

EERO. Let us do this: go home, but not stay a minute in the cabin, only leave the door ajar, so that it would look as though the family were quietly at home; meanwhile we can hide ourselves in the caves and gullies of Impivaara; sprawl there for two or three days, keeping a close watch on the cabin. And now if we see the Sheriff come near the house during that time with his men, we’ll always be ready to escape to the hills and forests. But if nothing happens in these three days and nights, all danger will be far from us.

TUOMAS. That’s advice and good advice.

AAPO. We’ll follow it.

TUOMAS. Let’s turn back then; come, Juhani, and put away that sulky look.

They set out once more towards Impivaara and soon reached their own yard. Acting on Eero’s advice, they opened the latch of their door and then climbed the fell, where they hid themselves carefully in comfortable crannies between the rocks or under the dense spruce that covered the fell-side terraces. Lounging there, they kept a searching eye on the cabin, the edges of the stump-covered clearing and the sombre line of forest. During the three days and nights they rested there, they kept watch in turns, eating from the birch-bark knapsacks and slaking their thirst at a clear spring, which welled up on the summit of the fell and flowed down in waves along a rocky road. Joyously the little brook gurgled while the long day held, gurgled all the moon-lit night, ever sounding in the watchful ears of the brothers.

But when the sun of the third day hastened to its setting, the brothers strode down from the fell and with rejoicing hearts took possession of their cabin, for now it seemed to them that their fears had been groundless. Even yet, however, they were not quite satisfied, but kept casting cautious glances out of the window. And the next day a spy was sent out; Aapo went out to bring confirmation of their safety. He lingered in the villages and farms a day and a night, and when he returned the message of peace could be read on his brow. And now all seated themselves round the big pine table, while Aapo, at its end, began to relate all that he had heard.

AAPO. Brothers! He is a peerless fellow, that Sheriff of ours; he has done as he said, and our case is as he said it was. The Toukola men, in spite of their spavined legs, the big bumps on their foreheads or the holes in their bodies, say nothing of going to law or of revenge by their own hands; and all this the Sheriff has done with his terrible threats. And what do you think is the rector’s idea of us? Ay, the old man has made peace with us, eternal peace; for he is now firm in a belief, which the Sheriff has argued into him, that hardness towards us would only bring about our everlasting doom. And another thing: when old Härkämäki, a rare old fellow after all, happened to mention us one day to the rector, saying in a growl: ‘Who knows but that those lads turn out real students one day?’ the rector replied that his joy in the Lord would be exceeding great if one day the Jukola brothers were to come before him, reading passably well by sight and knowing the ten commandments and the confession of faith by heart. These were indeed melting words. All this and much beside I heard from the mouths of many men, the most trustworthy being Kyösti Tammisto, who never smiles and never tells a lie.

JUHANI. Sheriff, thou bonny man, I would charge into blazing fire for thy sake! May the black bellowing bull take me! I can hardly believe it.

AAPO. Everything is as I said. We must now admit that gentlemen are not altogether such rogues as people think. Think of Viertola too, who came round so quickly and agreed to our offer on every point. While our rector, if we regard him without spite, straight from an honest heart and mind, rises in our eyes to noble heights, that I know. He is a fiery but true worker in the Lord’s vineyard, and has already done a mighty lot of good in the parish. He has closed many a wicked tavern; forced many a man and his former mistress to wed properly; and many neighbours who were always after each other’s blood he has enticed into sweetest friendship. And what has been his aim in all his work on our behalf? To make respectable Christians of us. Now he has taken his hand from us, but utters at the same time so beautiful a hope that the memory of it nips at my heart.

TUOMAS. And now to reading, an a-b-c book in hand, and the alphabet in our heads even if it has to be hammered there with a mallet.

AAPO. Now thou hast said something which, if we carry it out, will bring us new happiness. Ah! what if we were to start this great work together, without resting until it is done!

JUHANI. I understand. We are to pounce tooth and nail on the alphabet, without flagging until we are under the cock’s tail. Right! Soon we shall perhaps decide something, and once we decide, we’ll carry it out too, though we sweated blood. I have a hard head, hard enough, but there’s one and another thing in it, some real nimble works too. Shouldn’t I with daily practice be able to keep step with a five-year old chit of a girl? Why not? Hard work helps even with the worst of luck.

AAPO. Oh Juhani! my heart is uplifted by thy words, so full of manhood and sense.

JUHANI. Hard work conquers even the worst of luck. Ay, if we once start on the job, we’ll stick to it with clenched teeth. But the matter needs thinking over, wisely and from the roots upward.

AAPO. We’re going to try, for it is a mighty matter. Note: If we cannot read, even a lawful wife is forbidden fruit for us.

TIMO. What! Is that so too? Well rot me! Then it’s worth trying if this trick is perhaps going to help me to get a good wife, if I should ever be so mad as to want one. But who knows what’ll come into a lad’s head. Only God knows that.

JUHANI. Let us think the matter over wisely; we have such hard heads.

A few days were suffered to go by, and then one evening the matter was taken up anew, and they now decided to begin studying the alphabet in earnest.

JUHANI. In two years from now may the whole a-b-c be in my head; that’s said. But I’m sorry for Timo; his head’s harder than mine, twice as hard.

TIMO. Never mind, even if it is twice as hard. Thou’lt learn in two years, and that’ll be four for me. Ay, only patience is needed for that.

JUHANI. Hear him; that joke wiped a good many days off the reckoning, a whole year. But, lad! we’re in the fiend’s sleigh. There’s going to be more than one sigh squeezed out of us, and the a-b-c book will be pulp before it’s in our heads from back to back. God help us!

TIMO. I’m going to learn my a-b-c.

JUHANI. I’m going to do it too, even if it felt and tasted like chewing little pebbles and raw potatoes. I’m going to do it because our rector is so kind and merciful towards us that I’m quite sorry for him. But where can we get a good and gentle teacher?

AAPO. I’ve thought that out too. I look to thee, Eero. Ay, ay, thou hast a sharp head, that can’t be denied. But thank God for this gift and go out for a few weeks into the world, with food on thy back and thy a-b-c book in thy bosom. Go to the Sheriff’s Man: that fine wolf-catcher will teach thee. He is a clever fellow, and I know he will not deny thee his teaching, especially if we promise him a fine patch of forest for sowing and a jack capercaillie or two for a roast. Then when thou hast learned the chief points of ordinary reading, thou canst return and teach us.

JUHANI. What? Is Eero to teach us? Hm! Eero! Well, see that it doesn’t make thee proud, Eero; that I say.

EERO. Never! A teacher must always set a good example to his pupils, remembering the day of stern reckoning when he will have to say: ‘Here, Lord, am I and those Thou gavest me.’

JUHANI. Hark, hark, did it prick thee? But this is what is going to happen: thou wilt teach me when I want and keep silent as a roach when I want, and I learn from thee only when I want. That’s that. We’ll keep thee in order all right, that thou knowest. But maybe this plan will do.

TUOMAS. The best plan Aapo has ever invented.

JUHANI. A thousand crowns for this plan!

AAPO. Eero, what is thy own idea of the matter?

EERO. I’m willing to think it over.

AAPO. It’ll work, work beyond any doubt. But now I am going to row forth with a bigger idea, an idea that stands for itself. Brave boys and brothers! Let’s help to make Impivaara a fine new pioneer farm, make a farm in the forests with the strength of seven men. Ay, your eyes grow round and you stare at me in wonder. I’m not surprised. But just think it over: our living grows harder to get day by day; only seldom now we hear the bear whistle and rarely does a capercaillie start up crashing before us. Let us note another matter too, note that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. That is what we shall think one day; but the savage in the forests has to keep far from the bridal bed, the man who can hardly fill his own rumbling stomach, let alone those of a wife and children. But if we clear these vast backwoods into meadows, hoe this sloping sunlit clearing into fields, and around this house, round its echoing yard, gradually build stables, a cowhouse, a barn, a store-room and other buildings as they are needed, that will be a different matter. Then we shall have a big farm, Impivaara Farm, a farm in better condition than our birth-place, Jukola. And before that day comes when old Jukola will be ours again, the meadows here will be green, the rich fields wave with corn and each evening a herd of lowing cattle draw near us from the forest.

JUHANI. Thou speakest finely. But think, brother, we have one farm already, though rented now to a stranger. In a few years time we shall have it back.

AAPO. But before those years have gone we shall be idlers without our like, hardly bothering to lift our feet from the ground, while our farm will be about as wasted as it used to be. I have heard that the tanner is a shiftless fellow, a poor booby, and that no change has taken place yet in Jukola, either in the fields or the meadows. And even if that were not the case, it is always better to have two farms than one: Jukola and Impivaara. Our reputation would also rise greatly in the sight of men, and for wife there’d be many a bonny daughter of Häme to chose from. To work, brothers! To work with all our strength; for such a life would be worth the labour, and we have seen that mankind is not such a rogue as we have thought; nay, I would say that the world is towards us as we are towards the world, and that the one who ‘always suffers wrongs’ had better look into his own breast. We have often been scurvily treated; granted! but in reality only by those Toukola rascals, and I think that even they have had some cause for it. However that may be, peace and harmony are best; and we can always have peace if we only want it. Listen, we shall work here for a time like all honest people do, and when at last we go back to Toukola, our former enemies will look upon us with a bit more respect than before, and if we then give them friendly looks on our part, a bright day of general forgiveness will soon dawn. I admit that it will have cost us much, much work and teeth-clenching hardship, but without them there’s no harvest to be had down here. And one thing more: set plainly before the eyes of your souls what will be our final victory: we shall be men, friends with everybody, owning two farms, our future a ‘Cape of Good Hope’; and our graves on the misty coming shore of life will not seem a home of terror to us, but a place of delightful rest, a shadowy porch to the halls of the blest.

TUOMAS. Thou speakest prettily and rightly, and I’m with thee for one. Brothers, let us listen to him, for this is a mighty matter; it gives us a new birth, raises a new dawn over the edge of the forest. I’m with thee!

TIMO. And I too.

SIMEONI. God has heard us and our lives grow lighter. I’m agreed to Aapo’s blissful plan.

EERO. I agree too, for it is a manly step we shall be taking.

JUHANI. Should I not do the same, I, your wretched eldest brother? I agree, and shall always call this day a day of joy. Weren’t fetters or the Crown’s grey coat and the roll of drums almost upon us? Whereas now we are far from things like that, here amidst our own forests. So at midnight our sky was suddenly lighted, and this light, let us hope, will at once drive away all clouds and ‘God’s candles shine’, as the shepherds sweetly sing. Ah! God and the Sheriff have done their best by us; we will now try to do our best by them.

The next day they sent brother Eero off to his studies, well equipped. With a birch-bark knapsack on his back, a bag over his shoulder and an a-b-c book in his pocket, he set off on foot to the Sheriff’s Man’s home. The others equipped themselves with hoes and spades and began to hoe a field of the clearing around their cabin. Day by day, the area of ground broken up into clods increased; and an eternal grave was dug for the whortleberry bushes and cudweeds. But when they had hoed an enormous patch of the clearing, enough tillage to keep seven men alive, they left the clearing for the forest below, and began clearing a meadow amid the century-old spruce which dozed there, wrapped in cloaks of moss. Then the axes echoed again and with a crash the spruce fell on the moist ground. They peeled the trunks, gathered the branches in heaps, ready to be hauled to the yard in the winter, and carried the logs up to the old clearing to be used for their coming barn and cowhouse. While carrying them the men stepped stolidly one after the other, each log resting on six stout shoulders. And when they reached a certain mound, at a word of command from Juhani they would simultaneously cast down their load, and the log would fall thunderously to the ground, and the earth would boom and the forest answer. So from day to day their meadow grew in extent, stretching ever farther southward from the forest’s rim, while the materials for their new buildings grew in proportion.

Eero too worked hard to learn the art of reading and his skill increased with great rapidity. Every Saturday evening he would return home with empty bag; and on the following Monday he would set forth again, a bulging knapsack on his back and a bursting bag over his shoulder, set off for school with his a-b-c book in his bosom. Thus the autumn went by, winter approached, and the brothers left both fields and meadows to rest until the following spring and hastened to gather food for their cattle and for themselves. In the dark autumn woods they trudged in all directions with their dogs, reaping a bloody harvest; and down on the edge of the bog a high hay-rick grew again for Valko’s use.

Winter came; on Christmas Eve Eero returned home, sufficiently learned in the opinion of the Sheriff’s Man to be capable of teaching his brothers. Remarkably easily he had learned. He read fluently by sight and knew the a-b-c book by heart from back to back, and the Lesser Catechism as well. And then when Christmas was over, lessons began. Eero sat as teacher and his brothers as pupils, all shouting as with one mouth the names of the letters as the youngest brother called them out. They would all shout together, and the spacious cabin would echo. Hard and agonizing was this work to them, full of agony especially in the beginning; sorely they all sighed and sweated. Hardest of all worked Juhani; for very zeal his jaw would shake, and dozing Timo who sat beside him received many an angry poke of his fist whenever his poor head drooped. An added trial was that Eero did not always take his high calling with due gravity, but frequently allowed stinging little remarks to pass his lips. For this he had received many warnings from the brothers, but the game was dear to him.

Once on a winter day, when a biting frost prevailed outside and an almost rayless sun shone over the southern rim of the world, the brothers sat hard at work in their cabin, a-b-c books in their hands. The devoted, but monotonous sound of their reading might have been heard afar; it was the second time they were going through the alphabet.

EERO. A.

THE OTHERS. A.

EERO. B.

THE OTHERS. B.

EERO. Ay, A is the first letter of the alphabet and Z the last. ‘A and Z, the beginning and the end, the first and the last’, as it says somewhere in the Bible. But have you ever happened to see the last as the first, Z as A? It certainly looks a bit funny to see that little thing, the one that always used to be at the tail end, suddenly cock of the dunghill and all the others looking up to him with honour and respect, as at something fatherly, even though they do it with somewhat bulging eyes. But why do I turn to matters with which we have nothing to do just now. Ay, go on reading.

JUHANI. Do I catch thy meaning? I’m afraid I do. But teach us nicely now, or the Devil’ll get you.

EERO. Go on nicely with your lesson now. C.

THE OTHERS. C.

EERO. D.

THE OTHERS. D, E, F, G.

JUHANI. Wait a bit; I, poor boy, have lost my place. Let’s start again at the beginning.

EERO. A.

THE OTHERS. A.

EERO. A, B, C, ‘the cow ran up the tree’. What does this sentence tell us, Juhani? Canst thou explain it?

JUHANI. I will try to discover its meaning. Come out with me a little, you others; there is something important we must talk over.

So saying, he went out into the yard, and the others followed him; and with beating heart Eero began guessing what this withdrawal might portend. But in the yard the brothers discussed the best way of keeping down Eero’s cruel bent for joking, which caused him to jest with the a-b-c book in his hand and thus mock not only them, but also God and His word. And they concluded that he had earned a good whipping. They entered the cabin again, and the fresh birch-rod in Juhani’s hand struck the soul of Eero with dread. Tuomas and Simeoni seized the lad firmly; and then Juhani’s rod did its best. Eero yelled, kicked and raved, and when at last he was free, looked around him with terrible, murderous glance.

JUHANI. Now then, take the book in thy hand again and teach us properly, thou rascal, and remember this hiding whenever thy blackguard tongue feels like talking mockingly. Ah indeed! Did it hurt? Ay, ay, thou hast got what I prophesied thee years ago. For ‘evil is the mocker’s reward in the end’, that thou now knowest. Take the book, say I, and teach us in a sensible and proper way, thou rascal.

TUOMAS. Don’t grind thy teeth, but sit nicely down at the end of the table there and do as we bid thee. And do it without grumbling, or the stick’ll dance in my hand, and that’d mean a storm many times hotter than a minute ago.

They began reading again; but it was in a very surly and biting tone, accompanied by baleful glances, that Eero read out the letters to his brothers. And thus a stormy atmosphere reigned for long over the school-table at Impivaara, until time, after a few days had passed, again softened down Eero’s wrathful mind and countenance. Thus the brothers laboured to attain skill in reading, and their work prospered, although extremely slowly in the beginning, especially for Timo and Juhani.