“Make yourself easy as to that, my good father,” the son responded. “I will suit myself to the times.”
When the father was about to go to the forest to chop, the son said, “I will go with you and help.”
“Ah! but you have never been used to such hard work,” the father objected. “You must not attempt it. Besides, I have only one ax and no money to buy another.”
“Go and ask your neighbor to lend you an ax till I have earned enough to buy one for myself,” the son said.
So the father borrowed an ax, and he and the scholar went together to the forest, where the young man helped with the work and was very lively and merry. About noon, when the sun stood right over their heads, the father sat down to rest for a while and eat his dinner.
The scholar, however, took his share of bread and said: “I am not tired. I will go a little deeper into the forest and look for birds’ nests.”
“Oh, you silly fellow!” his father exclaimed, “why do you want to run about? You will get so weary you will not be able to raise your arm. Keep quiet a bit and sit down here with me.”
But the young man would not do that. He went off among the trees eating his bread and peeping about among the bushes for nests. To and fro he wandered until he came to an immense hollow oak tree. The tree was certainly hundreds of years old, and five men taking hold of hands could not have reached around it.
The scholar had stopped to look at this great tree thinking that many a bird’s nest must be built within its hollow trunk when he fancied he heard a voice. He listened and there came to his ears a half-smothered cry of “Let me out!”
He looked around, but could see no one. Indeed, it seemed to him that the voice came from the ground. So he called, “Where are you?”