“Fiam!” I exclaimed, after a few minutes of silence, “I not only love you, but respect you. You have done some beautiful things in your life.”
“But think what I have come to be—a match!”
“Tell me how it happened.”
“Well, some years passed; then one day I heard voices and the sound of axes in the woods, and I saw that companies of men were chopping down the trees. This work lasted for months. Near me there was another Haji living in a beautiful elm half-way up the mountain. One evening I heard the crash of a great tree falling, and in the midst of the noise I could hear the voice of my friend, who called out to me:
“‘Farewell, Mikara.’
“I looked over the tops of the trees. He was gone, and I never saw him again. The next morning a man passed near me, looked at me and, with a brush soaked in paint as red as blood, he made on my trunk the words that mean, ‘To be cut down.’
“I shook my bark in the way horses shake their skins to drive away flies, hoping to make those horrible words drop off, but I didn’t succeed. Some days later a group of ragged men arrived with axes; they read the words and fell upon me.”
“And what did you do?”
“I? In that moment of danger I revealed myself for the second time. You know, I told you that Hajis could make themselves known three times. I shouted, ‘Stop!’”
“And did they?”