CHAPTER III
THE END OF AUTUMN
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.