"What am I working out here all alone for?" said Olof. "Why, 'tis this way…." And with the red-brown fir chips flying all around him, he told them the story.
"So that's it? Well, good luck to you," answered the trees, and fell, one after another, till the earth rang and the echoes answered far through the forest.
Olof felt himself aglow with an inward fire that flamed the more as he gave it way in ringing strokes of the axe. He counted it a point of honour to strip each branch off clean at a single blow, be it never so thick…. And the more he worked the happier he grew.
He was trying to win back the years in which he had never held an axe.
* * * * *
By noon, he stood in the middle of a clearing already.
"Well, how does it feel?" asked the trees, as he sat down, with his jacket slung over his shoulders, hastily eating the meal he had brought with him.
"None so bad—hope for the best," he answered.
Again the axe flashed, the branches shivered, and the earth rang. "Bit crooked, that one," said Olof to himself; "but I can use it all the same—do for a piece between the windows."
"Well, you know best," said the trees. "But how many windows are you going to have—and how many rooms? You haven't told us that yet."