The next day Maja had to stay in the house to help while her mother and sister baked, for they were to have a talko, that is, neighbors had been invited over to help with the last of the harvesting. "Have lots of good things to eat," Juhani called as he followed his father out to help in one of the fields. Here a number of peasants were driving long poles into the ground at regular intervals; to these they fastened eight outstretched arms, the ends of which were curved upwards. On these arms hay that had been cut with sickles was carefully arranged that it might dry.

While this was being done, the grain that had been dried some time before was being baked in an outside oven or kiln not far from the hay barn, a big long building with a corrugated roof.

This baking makes the Finnish grain in demand for seed in other countries, for it drives away the damp and kills all insects that might injure the germ.

By evening all the work was finished, and the merry group of peasant men and women who had given their help trooped, singing, to the house. A big supper awaited them and as they sat down, the men on one side of the table, the women on the other, all showed the splendid appetites which the work in the fields had given them.

As soon as the supper was over, the floor was cleared, and all joined in dancing the national dance, called the jenka, during which a warmth of feeling was displayed that belied their reputation for being stolid, and that no stranger, who might have seen the men and women on their way to church the day before, would have believed possible.

After this the weather grew less pleasant; the sky was often dull and overcast; cold raw winds began to blow and there was much fog and sleet. During this time there was a certain flurry in the farm house, for Juhani, young as he was, had gained his father's permission to accompany an uncle to a lumber camp some distance to the north.

At the first fall of snow they left. It was a long drive they had, one that grew colder after the middle of the day. The air, which was very still, had a frostiness to it that nipped Juhani's nose and face. But neither he nor his uncle grumbled. The faces of both had a peculiarly similar look of patient endurance. It was not until toward evening that they came to a rolling swampy country where a big body of woodmen were already at work at the rude shelters that were to form the camp. For one night a batch of new men had to lie around the camp fire, turning one side, then the other to the heat, for there were not enough huts yet built.

Juhani was put to work almost at once in picking up chips and doing all sorts of odds and ends, for he had only been allowed to go on condition that he was willing to make himself useful. Later he was regularly sent alone twice a week through the forest to a peasant farm for milk and eggs. The coming and going for these took all of a day. Sometimes the forest was dark and silent; at other times birds called to him, and wild animals, strangely tame, would peep out from the snow-covered brush at him.

Once a merry squirrel enticed him into an old overgrown path. He continued to follow it even after he had lost track of the squirrel until he came to two branches, one of which he decided led in the direction of his destination.

After wandering about for an hour and finding that the trees and the brush were growing denser and denser he grew somewhat alarmed and tried to retrace his steps.

He soon found that this was impossible. Here it occurred to him that if he could get to the top of a tree he might have a better idea of where he was and what to do. So dropping his pail, he scrambled up the nearest willow. This was not high enough to give much of an outlook, and, getting down again, he cast longing eyes on a tall fir with no low branches.

With difficulty he dragged a small uprooted juniper to it and placing it against the trunk, with its help he managed to reach the lowest branch. It was then an easy task to climb to the top of the tree.

There was a very fair outlook from the top but no sign of the farmhouse for which he was bound. There was one thing comforting however. It was that at some distance away something glittered like water.

With a grunt Juhani let himself down and then stood in thought. Only for a moment did he allow himself to do this. He was too well aware of the shortness of the days to dally. Drawing his pukko (knife) he began to hew his way through the thick underbrush, over the springy soil, in the direction of what he knew must be the lake.

Now and then fallen tree trunks had to be scaled. Twice his feet caught in tangled vines and threw him. Several times he had to take the time to climb trees to assure himself that he was going in the right direction. And all the time he had the consciousness that night was descending.

It was already dusk when he reached the lake where, to his great relief, he recognized the spot by means of a big bowlder as being within half a mile of camp.

He saw, however, that in a very few minutes it would be too dark to go further. The only thing to do was to wait until the moon rose. So gathering together as much of the brush as he could, he started it burning and then lay down before it to try to get a little rest.

Despite the fire, which continually had to be replenished, it was very cold and he found it necessary to turn constantly first one side, then the other towards the flames to be at all comfortable.

At last the fire went out and there was nothing left for Juhani to do except sit with his back to the trunk of a nearby tree and wait. When the moon came out, it was a very stiff boy who arose and followed stumblingly the banks of the lake to camp.

Here he found a group of men with his Uncle in the lead, getting ready to start a hunt for him. As soon as he had stammered out his story to his Uncle the latter shook him angrily by the shoulder and ordered him to bed. "Don't you ever try anything of the kind again; at least not while you are on an errand for me," he called after him. And Juhani never did.

The boy won the favor of a driver of one of the short sledges on which the cut-down trees, rough hewn with axes and with the bark peeled off, were drawn, and he sometimes had a ride with him to the lake where men stalked the logs on the banks. On these trips, although he said nothing, he hardly knew whether he admired most how the driver guided the horses over the difficult ground or the intelligence of the alert little Finnish horses themselves.

Sometimes, instead of these trips, he had an opportunity to watch the actual cutting down of the trees. He would sometimes quiver in sympathy as a tree quivered before dashing down against the other trees, perhaps remaining suspended a moment, then coming with a crash to the ground and raising a flurry of snow.

Once a tree was down it was ready to be cleared of branches and then sawed into logs.

In the evening the spring journey of the logs, when they would be floated down the lake and out to sea, was often discussed. Juhani learned how men with long hooks were stationed at the narrow or rocky places on the water to keep the logs from getting blocked. This was difficult and often dangerous. Sometimes it led to loss of life.

While on the lake, the logs would be collected and chained together to form great rafts. Several of these would be fastened behind each other and drawn by a small tug. On these rafts the men would build themselves little huts on which they would live, for it is slow work to get the logs from the forests to the mills. Indeed it almost always takes one or two summers at least.

Sometimes instead of these stories, the men would sing rough songs that sounded out there in the wilds more weird and melancholy than they really were. Sometimes they discussed the future of Finland. There was one fellow among them to whom Juhani loved to listen. He remembered long the man's reply to a particularly pessimistic statement. "Our future depends on ourselves. Have we not the sea? Does it not stand for power and freedom? Shame, I say, on those who do not see it!"

Things in camp went along quietly enough until near the end of the season, when two of the men had a fight which might have ended seriously had they not been separated in time, for both had drawn their pukkos (knives).

Before Juhani left for home the driver invited him to come on a trip much further east than they were stationed. His uncle consented. It gave Juhani an opportunity to see the very primitive and wasteful agricultural methods that are still practiced in Finland in out-of-the-way places, that of burning down the forest to fertilize the land.

They spent the first night with the owner of a place on which this was done. He did his best to entertain them well.

After they had had supper the family gathered around the big rude fireplace, and while the fire crackled and a drink of some kind was passed around the talk drifted to the future prospects of the country. Then the peasant proprietor told of the time when the deposed Tzar of Russia, Nicholas II, through the Manifesto of February fifteenth, 1899, had tried to deprive Finland of most of her independence. "I heard through my young son who had just returned from further South, that signatures for a petition to the Tzar were being sought. 'They shall not lack mine,' I told my wife. It was bitterly cold even for one used to severe months of blinding snow, but I put on my skis and made my way through the dense forest in the face of a harsh wind, to the nearest settlement Here I learned that a messenger gathering signatures had just left. Without stopping for food or drink, I followed the direction he had taken through a frozen swamp and came up with him just before nightfall. And there, with nothing to be seen but snow around us, I signed the paper and returned to the settlement while he went on for another hour to the neighboring hamlet."

"I know of a case to match that somewhat," said the driver. "After the Tzar's Manifesto, a well-to-do farmer, who lived too far away to go to Helsingfors, wrote a petition himself to the Tzar, had it signed by the family, servants and those nearest, and then forwarded it."

Here the old grandmother, an intelligent looking peasant woman, with a brown plaid shawl tightly pinned around her neck, took the lead in the conversation, harking back to older times when she had known Elias LÖnnrot who made the folk songs he gathered into a whole as the great Finnish epic, the "Kalevala." This was evidently a favorite subject with her. "I was only a young girl," she said, "when he came as a physician to Kajana, which is a place of which it was then said there were two streets, 'Along one go pigs when it's wet, along the other the inhabitants when it's dry.' LÖnnrot was a strong fine fellow, very gentle. People used to say he would cry if he happened to kill a fly. He was rather careless about his clothes. I met him one day just as he was starting on one of his searches for folk songs. He was dressed like a peasant, with a short pipe in his mouth and a staff in his hand. A small flute hung from his button-hole, while a valise and gun were slung on his back. After he came back we spoke of nothing for weeks except his adventures. In one place he was taken for a tramp and found it impossible to secure any sort of vehicle to take him on his way. In another village the people thought him a wizard. They wouldn't give him any food. He remembered that an eclipse of the sun would take place that day. 'I'll make the sun die,' he said, 'if you don't attend to my wants.' The people laughed and hooted, but when the sun actually did disappear they were badly frightened and begged him on their knees to make it come back and brought him all kinds of good things to eat."

"It seems to me," said her son reflectively, "that LÖnnrot published something else besides the 'Kalevala.'"

"Indeed he did," said the grandmother quickly, proud of her knowledge, "why, I've taught you many a verse given in the Kanteletaar (the Daughter of the Kantele). It contains about seven hundred ancient songs and ballads."

Juhani and the driver were somewhat surprised at hearing all this at such a far off place. They would have gladly continued the conversation had it not been necessary to retire early to be prepared for the journey to the north on the morrow.