The following day, the Jukolas regained their home, stepping out one behind the other. But woebegone was their appearance: their garments hung in shreads and their faces were mottled with bruises and wounds. Juhani, who led the way, had had his left eye almost closed up, Aapo’s lips were badly swollen, a mighty bump protruded from Timo’s forehead, and Simeoni, limping, brought up the rear. Their heads had been thoroughly pummelled and were now wrapped round with empty food-bags or with strips of rag torn from a coat. In such condition they returned from their trip to school. The dogs, Killi and Kiiski, rushed forth to meet them, leaping with joy; but the brothers had little strength left to respond to the caresses of their faithful house-guards.

Who then had used them so cruelly? Who had succeeded so well in crushing the doughty Jukola brothers? Who else but the men of Toukola, whose revenge it was. Having heard that the brothers were at Tammisto, they had banded themselves together, twenty men strong, and hidden in the bushes by the wayside to await their enemies. There, with stout staves in their hands, they had dozed and bided their time. Then, as the school-goers drew nigh, the villagers fell swiftly upon them, charging from both sides of the road, and a terrific cudgelling began in which the brothers were badly beaten. But neither did the Toukola men escape whole-skinned from the affray, for many of them turned faint on acquaintance with the brothers’ fists. And two were borne swooning to their homes: Kuninkala’s Eenokki and Kissala’s Aapeli. And on this occasion Aapeli’s skull shone bare from neck to brow, shone like the bottom of a pewter mug. The hand of Juhani had done its fell work.

At last, however, the brothers sat in the large living-room of their home, terribly tired.

JUHANI. Whose turn is it to heat the bath-house?

TIMO. It’ll be mine now.

JUHANI. Then heat it till the oven cracks.

TIMO. I’ll try my best.

JUHANI. Do it like a man, for truly, our wounds need a steaming. And do thou, Eero, hasten and bring a can of spirits from Roution, for which they can have the stoutest log in our forest. A can of spirits!

SIMEONI. Isn’t that too much, a can?

JUHANI. Why, it’s hardly enough as grease for seven men. God knows, we have as many wounds between us as there are stars in the sky. But though this eye of mine aches and kicks right fiercely, the bile and heart in my innards ache fiercer still. But all’s well! all’s well! Jussi Jukola is not dead yet.

Evening fell, a melancholy September evening; Eero brought the spirits from Roution and Timo word that the bath was ready; and the men’s sullen temper revived a little. They set out to their bath, and Timo threw water on the heated oven until the blackened stones heaped over it cracked with a noise like rifle-fire and a cloud of hot steam was wafted round the bath-house. Each plied now with all his strength the feathery bunches of leafy birch-twigs, so grateful to the skin; they bathed and washed their wounds, and the furious beating of the twigs was heard afar without the building.

JUHANI. Our wounds are getting a real Turkish polka. Hot steam in the bath-house, that’s the best physic for soul and body. But my eye stings like Satan. Well, itch away and sting, all the hotter will I make it for thee. How is thy muzzle, Aapo?

AAPO. It’s beginning to melt.

JUHANI. Swipe away at it and beat it as a Russian hammers his nag, and it’ll soon be softer. But more steam, Timo, seeing it is thy job tonight to wait on us. That’s it, my boy! Let it come. Oh, but it’s hot there, it’s hot there! That’s the way, my broth of a brother!

LAURI. It fair bites at my finger-nails.

JUHANI. Let our nails get a basting, too.

AAPO. Stop throwing water now, boy; or we’ll soon have to climb down from here, every man of us.

EERO. Go on praising him and we shall soon be roasted to cinders.

JUHANI. That’s enough, Timo. Don’t throw any more. For Hell’s sake stop throwing water on that oven! Art thou coming down, Simeoni?

SIMEONI. I’m coming, wretch that I am. And ah, if ye only knew why!

JUHANI. Tell us.

SIMEONI. Man, remember the furnace of the lost and pray night and day.

JUHANI. Stuff! Let the body have it if it wants; for the hotter the steam-bath the greater its healing-power. That thou knowest.

SIMEONI. Whose hot water is this in the bucket near the oven?

JUHANI. It’s mine, as the smith said of his house. Don’t touch it.

SIMEONI. I’m going to take a drop of it, anyway....

JUHANI. Don’t do it, brother mine, or there’ll be trouble. Why didst thou not warm some for thyself?

TUOMAS. Why be so snappy without cause? Take a little from my tub, Simeoni.

TIMO. Or from mine, under the platform steps there.

JUHANI. Have some of mine then, too, but see thou leavest me at least half.

LAURI. Eero! Thou imp, take care I don’t throw thee off the platform.

AAPO. What tricks are you two up to in the corner?

JUHANI. What’s the squabbling about? Eh?

LAURI. Blowing on another fellow’s back.

AAPO. Softly, Eero!

JUHANI. Hey, troublemonger.

SIMEONI. Eero, Eero, can’t even the stewing heat of the bath remind thee of the fires of Hell? Remember Juho Hemmola, remember him!

JUHANI. He saw when he was stretched on a sick-bed the fiery lake, from which he was saved that time, and all because, as it was then said to him, he had always thought of Hell when he was on the bath-house platform. But can that be daylight shining through yon corner?

LAURI. Bright daylight.

JUHANI. Oh the beast! the bath-house sings its last note. So let the first aim of my mastership be a new bathhouse.

AAPO. A new one’s needed, it’s true.

JUHANI. Ay, no gainsaying that. A farm without a bath-house is no good either from the standpoint of baths or the babies a wife or the farm-hands’ women might have. Ay, a smoking bath-house, a barking hound, a crowing cock and a mewing pussy, these are the signs of a good farm. Ay, there’s plenty to do for the one who takes over our home. A little more steam, Timo!

TIMO. It shall be given thee.

SIMEONI. Don’t let us forget that it is Saturday night.

JUHANI. And let us take care our skins aren’t soon hanging from the rafters, like the former serving-maid’s.

SIMEONI. That was the maid who never had time to take her bath with the others, but dillied and dallied in the bath-house long after all the others had gone to bed. Then one Saturday night she stayed longer than usual. And what did they find when they went to look for her? Only a skin hanging from the rafters. But it was a master-hand had done the flaying, for the hair, eyes, ears and even the nails had been left in the skin.

JUHANI. Let this be a warning.... Hi-hi, how skittishly this back of mine takes its steam! As though thou hadst not tasted a birch-twig since New Year’s Day.

LAURI. But who had skinned her?

TIMO. Who, thou askest. Who else but the ...

JUHANI. Old ’Un himself.

TIMO. Ay, he who goes around like a roaring lion. A horrible story!

JUHANI. Timo-lad, stick that shirt of mine from the rafters there into this fist.

TIMO. What, this one?

JUHANI. Ho! ’Tis Eero’s little rag he offers to a full-grown man. Ah thee! That middle one there.

TIMO. What, this one?

JUHANI. That’s a man’s shirt. Ta, brother. A horrible story, say I too to go back to what we were speaking of. Let it be a reminder to us that ‘the eve is the height of a feast-day’. Now let’s wash ourselves as clean as though we had just come from the midwife’s nimble paws: and then shirt under arm to the house, so that our over-heated bodies can get a skinful of cool air on the way. But I do believe this beloved eye of mine is getting better.

SIMEONI. My leg isn’t better yet, but aches and burns as though it were wrapped round with hot ashes. What’s to become of poor me with it?

EERO. Go nicely to bed when we reach the house and pray for leg-salve, and then thank thy Creator who has not suffered thee today to ‘dash thy foot against a stone’, as it says in evening prayer.

SIMEONI. I do not hear thee, I do not hear.

EERO. Then pray for ear-salve as well. But start moving, or thou’lt be left here a prey to Old Nick.

SIMEONI. My ears are closed to thee, closed in a spiritual sense. Understand me, man!

EERO. Come on, or thy skin will soon be hanging from the rafters, and that in a bodily sense.

Naked and hot, they went from the bath-house to the sitting-room, their bodies glowing like the sunlit stem of a birch-tree. Arrived within, they sat down to rest a while sweating plentifully. Then little by little they dressed themselves. And now Juhani began concocting an ointment for the whole wounded brotherhood. Into an old handleless saucepan, which he placed on the fire, he poured the can of spirits, stirring into it two spans of gunpowder, one of ground sulphur and a like measure of salt. And when this had boiled for an hour, he set the mixture to cool, and the ointment, which resembled a pitch-black gruel was ready. With this salve they anointed their wounds, paying particular attention to those in their heads, and then covered the whole with fresh, golden tar. Whereafter their teeth met fiercely and a dark flush overspread their faces; so burned the potent ointment in their wounds. But Simeoni set forth supper; seven ring-shaped loaves, the smoked haunch of a cow and a heaped-up platter of stewed turnips soon lay on the table. Food, however, was little to their taste that evening, and after a few moments they rose from table and, having undressed, lay down on their beds.

The night was dark, peace and silence reigned everywhere. But suddenly the air around Jukola was illumined: the bath-house had caught fire. So hot had Timo heated the grey stone oven that after smouldering a while the wall burst into flames. And in deepest peace the building burned to ashes, unseen of a single eye. And when morning dawned, there was left of the Jukola bath-house only a few glowing cinders and the white-hot ruins of the oven. At last, at midday, the brothers awoke, feeling a good deal fresher than on the previous day, and dressing themselves, sat down to breakfast; and food now tasted well to them. For long they ate without uttering a word, until at last a conversation arose regarding the scene of violence on the road between Tammisto and Toukola.

JUHANI. True, it was a fair beating for us; but then they fell on us like robbers with staves and cudgels. Ah! if we too had had weapons in our hands and a hint of the danger beforehand, they’d be sawing coffin-boards at Toukola village today, and there’d be work for the grave-digger. However, I gave Kissala’s Aapeli his due.

TUOMAS. A white, hairless path ran down from his forehead to his nape like the Milky way in an autumn sky.

JUHANI. Thou sawest?

TUOMAS. I saw it.

JUHANI. He got his due, but the others, the others, oh Lord!

EERO. We’ll be revenged on them down to their marrows.

JUHANI. Let us lay our heads together; and it may be the means of us finding an idea for a matchless revenge.

AAPO. Why should we work everlasting ruin? Let’s seek the law and justice, and not revenge by our own hands.

JUHANI. The first Toukola man I lay hands on, I’ll eat alive, skin and hair; there’s the law and justice.

SIMEONI. Wretched brother! Dost thou ever intend to be heir to Heaven?

JUHANI. What do I care for Heaven, if I can’t see Tuhkala Matti’s blood and entrails!

SIMEONI. Oh what a monster thou art, what a monster! I must weep.

JUHANI. Weep thou for the cat’s death, but not for my sake. Grrh! I’ll make sausages of them.

TUOMAS. I’ll be revenged for this beating, I stake my word and oath on it. Only a wolf would treat a man so.

JUHANI. A raving wolf. I swear the same oath.

AAPO. That revenge would only rebound on to our own backs; but the law would punish them and reward us.

JUHANI. The law won’t make their backs smart with these wounds of ours.

AAPO. All the worse will their purse and good name smart.

SIMEONI. Let us put bloody revenge out of our minds; let us appeal to the law. I’m ready for that, even though the noise and bustle of a court-room is greatly scaring to me.

JUHANI. If it comes to that, here’s a lad who wouldn’t flinch even there. True, a fellow’s heart beats a bit faster the first time he stands before the table of high justice, but a real man soon bucks up. I still remember that time when I was witness for poor Kaisa Koivula, who applied for maintenance for her child. I remember how the Serjeant shouted: ‘Juhani, son of Juhani Jukola, of the village of Toukola!’

TIMO. ‘And his younger brother Timotheus!’ I was there too; and Kaisa got a father for her baby like winking. I was witness too, Juhani.

JUHANI. Thou wert, thou wert. But there was a crowd for you, porch, steps and yard full. I was just sitting in the porch, chatting with Kyösti Tamisto about what and how a lad has to speak before the judge. I was talking real gravely with him, twiddling his coat buttons, so, like that, when the Serjeant, or wolf-bailiff, shouted in such a loud voice that I’ll lay it made many of the folk there open their eyes and ears widely: ‘Juhani, son of Juhani Jukola, of the village of Toukola!’

TIMO. ‘And his younger brother Timotheus!’ And, dog take it, Kaisa got a father for her child.

JUHANI. That she did.

TIMO. Even though we weren’t allowed to take oath.

JUHANI. We weren’t, that’s true. But our frank and honest witness helped a lot.

TIMO. And our names have gone up in deeds and dockets right to the Emperor himself, hey!

JUHANI. That’s well known. Ay, so the Serjeant shouted, and there was a kind of jump in the cockles of this lad’s heart, but he was soon at home and pouring out of his mouth the unwavering language of truth like he’d been an apostle, without heeding the laughter and giggling of all those in court.

TIMO. That’s how we’re treated in court, and all goes well. However, there’s more than one noose cast there and many a foot put slyly out for a man to trip over.

JUHANI. That’s so, but truth and justice snatch the victory in the end after all their tricks.

TIMO. After all their tricks and wiles; ay, unless the very devil is lawyer and makes out night to be day and day night and black tar to be skim-milk. But one thing can be as good as two. Why didn’t God place justice on a firmer, ay, a downright firm footing? Why witnesses, long questionings and lawyers’ tricks? To my mind, the quickest road to truth and justice, if a matter seems doubtful and can’t be cleared up, would be this: all the court, with the judge himself in the lead, would step out into the yard, where the Serjeant or hunt-bailiff would blow a big birch-bark horn, that could be called the court-horn; with this he’d blow a few toots, holding its mouth towards God’s Heaven. And then Heaven would open and the angel of the Lord appear to all the people, asking in a loud voice; ‘What does the Serjeant want,’ and then the Serjeant would ask back in a high crying voice: ‘Is the accused man guilty or innocent?’ Then the bright angel would give an answer the truth of which no one could doubt, and according to which the man would be let go, or get a thorough hiding. In this way I believe everything would go well.

JUHANI. Why even that much shouting and fashing. See how I have thought the matter out. As the Creator I’d have arranged it so: the accused man would have to confirm his words by a vow, a sacred oath, and if he swore truly, let him toddle off home a free man again, but if he felt like loosing off a lie, let the solid earth open beneath him and Hell swallow him. That’s the straightest road to truth.

AAPO. It might be done that way, but best perhaps as it was once ordained by the Father of Wisdom himself.

JUHANI. Best! Here we sit, battered, scabby and one-eyed like tom-cats in March. Is this right? Marry, this world is the daftest thing under the sun!

SIMEONI. So He hath arranged it, for He wishes to try His children’s firmness in belief.

JUHANI. Firmness in belief. He tries and weighs us, but, through these trials of his, souls go down to that everlasting bath-house like midges; thither, where I wouldn’t wish a snake, although I’m only a sinful human being.

TUOMAS. A hard game, this life and this world. Little is the hope for any of us of as small a chance as Joshua’s and Caleb’s amongst six hundred thousand men.

JUHANI. You’re right! What is this life then? The porch of Hell.

SIMEONI. Juhani, Juhani, keep watch over thy thoughts and language!

JUHANI. Hell itself, say I, if I take on my worst temper. I’m the suffering soul down here and the Toukola lads devils, with pitchforks in their fists. All men are like evil spirits towards us.

AAPO. Now, now, let us enter into our own bosoms a little. The wrath of mankind towards us has perhaps been lit and kept alive in great part by our own works. Let us not forget how we have sported in their turnip-fields and peastacks, how we have trampled their water-meadows on our fishing-trips and often shot the bears they had ringed, and done many other such tricks, heedless of the law’s warnings or the voice of conscience.

SIMEONI. We have awakened the anger of Heaven and earth. Often when I lay me down to sleep and think of the wicked deeds of our youth, the fiery sword of conscience pricks real painfully at my wretched bosom, and I seem to hear, like the sound of rain far away, a curious murmuring, and another dismal voice seems to whisper in my ear: ‘The sigh of God and Man for the seven sons of Jukola’. Ruin threatens us, brothers, and the star of happiness will not shine for us until we are on better terms with our fellowmen. Why shouldn’t we then go and beg for forgiveness, promising to live differently hereafter?

EERO. I would weep if I could. Simeoni, Simeoni! ‘with but little more persuasion thou wouldest fain’ ... yea, there wasn’t much lacking. ‘But go thy way this time’.

SIMEONI. Ay, ay, we’ll see on the last day.

TIMO. Would I be brought round to ask for forgiveness? I won’t believe it.

TUOMAS. Not while the raven is black.

EERO. We’ll see it done then when we come to Judgment. Then the raven will be white as snow, as it says in the song of the merry lad and the loving old mother. Gladly for me the last grains in the hopper before we begin to pray.

JUHANI. Believe me, Simeoni, it’s no use always watching the state of our souls, for ever thinking of the fiery pit, the devil and all the little devils. Such ideas either addle a man’s brains altogether or tie a halter round his neck. Those former mad pranks of ours are to be looked upon rather as the foolishness of youth than as sins in the strictest sense. And secondly, I have come to the belief and conviction that we have sometimes to close our eyes down here, and pretend not to see what we see, or to know what we know. A man’s got to do that if he wants to escape whole-skinned from the mortar of life. Don’t stare at me like owls, there’s no call for any staring. What I mean are those smaller sins against God, not against my neighbour. My neighbour and nearest has a skin to his nose and is as touchy as I am, and wants his best as I do mine; but God is a man slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, and always forgives us in the end, if we only pray from an earnest heart. Ay, ay, I mean that it is no use in season and out measuring to a hair our own works and, what shall I say, little rascalities by God’s words and commandments, but best to stand half-way. Big sins we must keep from by all means, say I, and pray for eye-salve, but the smaller ones, namely, smaller ones against God, we needn’t for ever be weighing on the hooks of conscience, but stand half-way, half-way.

SIMEONI. Good God! That’s what Satan whispers in our ears.

TIMO. Just as Olli’s old woman feeds Mäkelä’s wife with lies when she’s thirsting for a drink.

AAPO. Juhani uttered a few words that I heard with wonder and dismay. Brother, is that what God’s commandments teach us? Is that what our mother taught us? Never! One is with the Lord as a thousand and a thousand as one. How canst thou then babble of smaller sins, of standing half-way, defending the serving of two masters? Say, Juhani, what is sin?

JUHANI. What is truth? thou Jukola’s Solomon, thou wise old man from Savo? ‘What is sin?’ Ha! ‘What is sin?’ Oh what wisdom, what marvellous wisdom. ‘There’s a head for you on our little boy’, verily there is. Ay, what’s the good of speaking. ‘What is sin?’ Ha-ha! What is truth, ask I.

TUOMAS. Why wriggle out of it, lad? Know that the doctrine thou proclaimest is the Devil’s doctrine.

JUHANI. Let me give you a living example that strongly bears out my belief. Recall to your minds the former tanner in the village. The man got strange ideas about his soul, sin and worldly mammon, and began altering his former ways greatly. Thus he suddenly stopped taking in and giving out hides on Sunday, without looking to how important one road and two errands are to the farmer. His friends warned him in vain when they saw his business shrink from day to day, while that of the other tanner next door grew and grew. The madman always replied: ‘God will surely bless the work of my hands though there be less of it, but as for him who now thinks he is snatching the bread out of my mouth, he will reap curses in the end in the sweat of his brow for not having honoured the Lord’s Sabbath.’ So he would spout, walking about staring on Sundays with a hymnbook in his fist, the eyes in his head round as marbles and his hair sticking up like Bomb-Peter’s wig. And what happened to the man in the end? We know what. It wasn’t long before he had the heaviest piece of wood in his hand, a beggar’s staff, and his path became the endless highway. Now he wanders from village to village, emptying a glass wherever he can. I met him once at the road-side over there on Kanamäki Ridge; there he sat on the cross-bar of his sledge, and royally drunk was the miserable man. ‘How fare you, tanner?’ asks I. ‘I fare as I fare’ answers he, with one stiff look at me. But I asked him again: ‘How are matters with you, master?’ ‘They are as they are’ he answers again, and went his way, bleating some foolish kind of song. That was his end. But the other tanner? He became rich as anything, and rich and happy he died.

AAPO. Narrow-minded belief and spiritual pride ruined the tanner, and so it will be with all of his sort. However that may be, thy doctrine is false doctrine and belief.

SIMEONI. False prophets and the last days of the world.

TIMO. He wants to tempt us over to the Turk’s religion. But thou canst not shake me; for I am sure and steadfast, sure and steadfast as the eye of an axe.

JUHANI. Hand me, Tuomas, that half loaf from the end of the table there. ‘False prophets’. I tempt no man to sin and evildoing, and I myself wouldn’t steal a bradawl from a cobbler or the eye of a needle from a tailor. But my heart strikes sparks when my meaning is always twisted to its worst, made out black as pitch, when a dark brown would be enough.

AAPO. Thou spokest so plainly, weighed the matter so from point to point and chapter to chapter, that we couldn’t have misunderstood it.

TIMO. My head on it, he wanted to tempt us over to the Turks’ religion.

SIMEONI. God have mercy on him!

JUHANI. Shut your mouths, and quickly. Pray to God for me, scold me like meek-eyed persons, I tell you it won’t do. I have just enough wisdom, even if I’m not pure unmixed wisdom like, for example, our Aapo there.

AAPO. God forbid! I’m not even as wise as I should be.

JUHANI. Pure wisdom, pure wisdom! And keep thy breadtrap shut, or thou’lt get this paw against thy muzzle and a bit harder than yesterday. This I say and my paunch being full, leave off eating.

TIMO. I’ll lay that every man of us is as tight as a gad-fly.

EERO. But why do I see no bath-house?

JUHANI. What would a midget like thee be seeing? But--our bath-house has gone to blazes!

EERO. No, but to Heaven in a fiery chariot.

JUHANI. Can it have burned down?

EERO. How should I know, and what have I to do with it? It’s the master of Jukola’s bath-house, not mine.

JUHANI. Eero’s body too, if I remember rightly, sweated there yesterday. Ay, ay, everything on the master’s back, that I well believe. But let’s go and look. Where’s my cap? Let’s go and look, brothers. I know that our bath-house is in ashes.

They went out to see what had befallen their bath-house. But all that there was left to see was a blackened fireplace and a smoking chaos. The brothers gazed upon this scene of destruction for a while with annoyance, and at last returned to the living-room. Last came Juhani, in his fist two iron hinges which he cast angrily on the table.

JUHANI. Ay, the house of Jukola is now bathless.

EERO. ‘And a farm without a bath-house is no good’ said Brother Juhani.

JUHANI. Timo made the dear old oven too hot, and dust and ashes is all that’s left of the beloved sooty rafters and walls, in whose shelter each of us entered into the light of the world. Timo heated the oven mightily, say I.

TIMO. At thy bidding, at thy bidding; that thou knowest well.

JUHANI. I give the devil for ‘thy bidding’, but that we are now bathless men, and that is an annoying thing. Building a new one won’t add to our bread.

AAPO. An annoying matter; but still the bath-house was old and its corners full of holes; and thou thyself didst decide yesterday to build a new one right soon.

JUHANI. True it was old and its logs steamed through to their marrows, but it would have done at a pinch for a year or two. The farm has no strength yet to waste on building bath-houses; the fields, the fields are what we must pounce on first.

TUOMAS. Thou’lt treat the fields as thou didst the big meadow last year, whose fine hay we let wither without a single stroke of the scythe. But it was thy wish. Whenever I reminded thee of the mowing, thou wouldst answer: ‘we won’t go just yet, the hay is still growing so fast that you can hear it.’

JUHANI. That is something past and thy jawing can’t help it. The big meadow’ll grow all the better in the coming summer. But who’s that man coming towards the house in the field yonder?

TUOMAS. Juryman Mäkelä. What can the man want?

JUHANI. Now the devil’s loose. He comes in the Crown’s name, and it’s because of that accursed scrap with the Toukola lads.

AAPO. In the last fight the law is on our side, but in the first one we must look to ourselves. Let me explain matters to him.

JUHANI. As the eldest brother, I too want the right to speak when our common good is being talked over.

AAPO. Then see thou dost not talk all of us into a trap, if so be we should have to wriggle a little.

JUHANI. I know how.

Entered Mäkelä, an excellent and well-meaning juryman. He came, however, on a different errand from that which the brothers had guessed.

MÄKELÄ. Good-day!

THE BROTHERS. Good-day!

MÄKELÄ. What horrors do I see? Boys, how are matters here? Torn, bruised, scabby, dressed in rags! Miserable men!

JUHANI. ‘Trust a dog to lick its wounds’, but let the wolves look to themselves. Is this the reason thou now standest in our house?

MÄKELÄ. What did I know of this? But can brothers have harried each other in this wise? Shame on you!

JUHANI. Thou art mistaken, Mäkelä, we brothers have treated each other as angels. This is the work of neighbours.

MÄKELÄ. Who has done this?

JUHANI. Kind neighbours. But may I ask why thou hast come to see us?

MÄKELÄ. For a grave reason. Boys, boys, the day of your ruin is upon you.

JUHANI. What will that day be like?

MÄKELÄ. A day of shame.

JUHANI. When will it dawn?

MÄKELÄ. I have strict orders from the Rector to bring you to church next Sunday.

JUHANI. What does he want of us at church?

MÄKELÄ. To put you in the stocks, to speak plainly.

JUHANI. Why?

MÄKELÄ. For many reasons. You wild and maddened men! You broke the parish clerk’s window and then fled like wolves.

JUHANI. ’Twas the parish clerk who worried us like the wildest wolf.

MÄKELÄ. But what has the Rector done to you?

JUHANI. Not the bite of a flea.

MÄKELÄ. And yet you have mocked and insulted him through that foul-mouthed, brazen Cupper-Kaisa. You sent, by Rajamäki’s awful regiment the most filthy, really scoundrelly greetings to a well-born man, the shepherd of our parish; that was bare-faced insolence without like.

JUHANI. ‘It’s true enough, but prove it,’ said Kakkinen’s Jake, but so say not I.

MÄKELÄ. But now, know that the rector’s sternest revenge will befall you. Now he is without pity for you.

AAPO. Sit down, Mäkelä, and let us talk over the matter a little more broadly and deeply. What do you say to this point: can the Rector screw us down in the stocks for Rajamäki Kaisa’s lies? Surely not! Let what we have said and in what way hurt his honour be legally proven.

JUHANI. ‘First a matter must be weighed, ere the rod on back be laid’, that’s well known.

MÄKELÄ. But another thing, this matter of reading, gives him a fair amount of power, anyhow, by the church laws, which he is now sure to use against you in his anger.

JUHANI. In the matter of reading we have God’s own laws and regulations on our side, which rise against any attempt. Look you, already in our mother’s womb He gave us such hard heads that it is impossible for us to learn to read. What are we to do, Mäkelä? The gifts of learning fall very unevenly on our heads down here.

MÄKELÄ. The hardness of your heads is only an empty fancy. Diligence and daily practice will overcome anything in the end. Your father was one of the best readers.

AAPO. But our mother never knew a single letter, and yet she was a true Christian.

JUHANI. And brought up and chastised her sons in the fear of God. God bless the old woman.

MÄKELÄ. Did she try what the skill of others could do for you?

JUHANI. Indeed she did her best; she tried what Old Mother Pinewood could do. But that hot-tempered beldame began at once hammering our backs, and her cabin became worse in our eyes than a cave of demons; and at last we never entered it, though they whipped us like a dying fire.

MÄKELÄ. In those days you were a thoughtless lot, but now you stand for yourselves as men; and a commonsense, healthy man can do what he wills; show the Rector and the world, therefore, what manhood can do. As for thee, Aapo, who hast such a sensible mind and lackest not a mite or two of knowledge, and whose sharp memory preserves all thou hearest or seest, at thee I must wonder that thou hast not already altered thy ways.

AAPO. ’Tis but little I know; oh well, I know a thing or two. Our blind uncle that was told us many things, things from the Bible, of his travels at sea and the build of the world, and then we always listened to him with pious hearts.

JUHANI. We listened with ears erect as a hare’s when the old man talked to us of Moses, the children of Israel, happenings from the Book of Kings and the miracles of Revelations. ‘And the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots as they rush to war’. Lord save us! we know many miracles and things, and aren’t quite such black heathens as people think.

MÄKELÄ. But to become true members of the Christian Church you must begin from the a-b-c book.

AAPO. Mäkelä, on that board you see seven a-b-c’s, purchased at Hämeenlinna, and may this sight prove to you our willingness to learn. Let the Rector show a little more patience, and I think that something can take root, grow and prosper out of this matter.

JUHANI. Let him be longsuffering towards us and I am willing to pay him his tithes twice over, and the flesh of young game shall not be lacking in his bowl, at lawful times.

MÄKELÄ. Prayers and fine promises won’t help here I’m afraid, when I think of his great and righteous anger.

JUHANI. What does he want of us then, and what do you want? Good! Come with seventy men, and blood shall squirt around us even then.

MÄKELÄ. Tell me, what steps do you mean to take to learn your alphabet and the lesser catechism, which is the chief concern of our Rector.

JUHANI. Try what the teaching of Mother Pinewood or her daughter can do for us here at home. Good reading women, both of them.

MÄKELÄ. I will tell the Rector of your intention. But for the sake of your own peace go and beg his forgiveness for your insolent deed.

JUHANI. We will think over that point.

MÄKELÄ. Do as I say; and note that unless he observes in you an honest and strenuous endeavour, you’ll be in the stocks, nicely in the stocks one Sunday, under the church windows. This I say; and now fare ye well!

JUHANI. Farewell, farewell!

TUOMAS. Didst thou really mean what thou said’st about Old Mother Pinewood and her daughter? Was it in earnest thou half promised to go and crawl before the Rector?

JUHANI. There wasn’t a mite of earnest in it, and of truth not a whit. To win time was what this lad’s prattle was meant for. Mother Pinewood or Venla to guide our reading-sticks! Why, even the Toukola pigs would laugh! You heard, we were threatened with the certain stocks, with the pillory of shame. A thousand flaming goblins! hasn’t a man the right to live his own life and as he likes in peace, when he stands in no one’s way, tramples on no one’s rights? Who’ll forbid it? But I say once again: parsons and officials with their books and papers are the evil spirits of mankind. O thou black sow! O cursed day on earth! we’re so knocked head over heels by the blows of hard fate and the cruelty of men, that I could dash my head against a wall. O thou black bull! Venla refused us; they’ve made a nasty, stinging song about us; the parish clerk tortured us like the Evil One himself; the Toukola lads hammered us like senseless earth, we were trounced like Christmas pigs and now strut here like real Christmas brownies, like one-eyed gnomes with rags round our heads. What more? Isn’t our home now without the poor man’s only treat, the roaring steam of the bath-house? There the ruins of our bath-house smoke and smoulder. And there’s still the worst of devils left. Hrrh! With all its ten holes the stocks grin at us from the church porch. Bright lightning! If such a bunch of worries doesn’t lift a razor to a man’s throat, what will? O thou horned bull!

EERO. Now thy memory is a little weak; there aren’t ten holes in the stocks.

JUHANI. How many then?

EERO. How many stars in Charley’s Wain, how many sons at Jukola?

JUHANI. We are seven. Seven holes therefore and seven sons. Well, all the worse. Seven holes! Always worser and worser. See how men and hard fate are joined together against us. Seven holes like millstone-eyes! What mockery of hard fate! Well, let them shoot all the arrows of their rage at us, we’ll clench our overgoaded hearts hard as sparkling steel. Let them blow poison at us from every side like snakes, and the heavens rain pure gall on us, we’ll still, with eyes shut, grinding our teeth and roaring like mad bulls, charge at them. And if we are dragged at last by all the Crown’s might to the stocks, why, it’s with blissful joy I’ll sit in them, I.

AAPO. Why with joy?

JUHANI. Thou dost not understand, brother, the awful power of anger. The thought of revenge would make this lad forget all shame; and it’s shame is their purpose. A dream, that of bleeding our mister Rector, it’s that would taste like honey-dew to my angry mind. And it wouldn’t be a knife, or a gun I’d use, like the former man from Karja, no, but with teeth and claws I’d fly at his throat like a she-wolf. I’d tear the man to bits, to a thousand bits and taste my revenge to the last drop. I’d do this even if I had ten lives and each life were to be tortured ten years in a spiked barrel. It’d be nothing against the lust of my revenge.

AAPO. Thou stirrest up all thy being. Lave, miserable brother, the seething cauldron of thy heart with cool water from the rippling brook of patience, which flows onward through the meadows, gently meandering.

SIMEONI. Thy face is pitch-black, and thy eyes roll bloodshot, sharp as gimlets. Have mercy on thyself.

TUOMAS. Truly, if we were made to sit in the stocks, we’d have revenge, but may our hearts beat in peace until that happens. All hope is not past yet.

JUHANI. On one croner of the earth a day of peace still gleams for us. Ilvesjärvi Lake yonder, on the side of Impivaara, is the harbour to which we can sail away from the storm. Now my mind is made up.

LAURI. Mine was already made up last year.

EERO. I’ll follow you even into the deepest cave on Impivaara, where it is said the Old Man of the Mountain boils pitch, with a helmet made of a hundred sheep-skins on his head.

TUOMAS. We’ll all move there from here.

JUHANI. Thither we’ll move and build a new world.

AAPO. Cannot the hand of the law reach us there too?

JUHANI. The forest shields its pups. There we are indeed on our own ground; deep as bleary-eyed moles we’ll dig ourselves in, right to the bowels of the earth. And if they felt like meddling with us lads there, they’d be made to see what it feels like to disturb seven bears in their lair. Now to the tanner’s to draw up a lease in writing. For ten years the farm can pass into other hands.

SIMEONI. I too long for an abode of peace. Brothers, let us create ourselves a new home and a new heart in the depths of the forest.

JUHANI. All with a single mind!

AAPO. What dost thou decide, Timo?

TIMO. ‘Where all others, there I too’, says the proverb.

AAPO. You would move, and I be left here, a lone pine in Jukola’s yard? Ah, for that every root and fibre of my being is too firmly fast in your company. I’m agreed, then, and let’s hope for the best from this trip. I’ll come with you.

JUHANI. Splendid! Now to the tanner’s the lot of us, to draw up a proper lease. All with a single mind!

They set out in a body to draw up the lease, rented their farm to the tanner for ten years; and the following paragraphs were set down in writing. The tanner was to rule over and run the farm for ten years, the first three years without any rent, whereafter he was to pay the brothers seven barrels of rye each year and build a new bath-house before the lease expired. Anywhere in the Jukola forests the brothers were at liberty to hunt, and any kind of game the law allowed. In the northern section of the farm’s holding, around Impivaara, the brothers were free to do and live as they pleased, this applying both to the clearings and the forests. The tanner was to take over the farm on All Saints’ Day, but if they so wished, the brothers were to be given shelter in the home of their birth over the coming winter. These were the main conditions of the lease.

Came November, and the tanner stood with his loads in the Jukola yard and took over the management of the farm for the term of the lease. But to avoid the Rector and his men, the brothers spent the winter mostly in the forest, ski-ing around and hunting; the charcoal-burner’s hut on Impivaara did for camp. They did not, however, move altogether with horse and other belongings from the farm. This they had settled was to take place when spring had come. Nevertheless, they worked already at their coming abode, felled trees to dry during the spring and rolled stones for the foundations on to a stump-besprinkled clearing under the steep fell-side.

Thus passed the winter, and during the whole of its course no command or reminder reached the brothers from the Rector. Was he merely biding his time, or had he left them to their fate?