"It can't hurt you," said my father, to console him. "It is pure linseed oil."
"Forest-farmer," said Clements, gradually recovering himself, "here I am, bringing all sorts of good things to your house; and this is the way you treat me!"
"You're the first I ever met that did not like flax-wine," replied my father. "It's just like a wine, so golden and clear. And you couldn't find anything better for one's precious health. I am in the doctor's debt to the price of a couple of oxen; and even then I should be under the sod to-day if Our Father in Heaven had not made linseed-oil to grow."
"And, as you, forest-farmer, are still, thank God, above the sod," drawled Clements, "you'll be needing money, I'm thinking. Look, it's your guardian angel's brought me here: I'm bringing you some."
"Oh, my gracious!" replied my father, leaning his whole weight upon the lever, so that the oil-cake in the press had to yield its last drains, which, however, were received into a separate little pot, for these dregs are not quite so clear and mild as the first stream. "Oh, my gracious!" said he. "I could do with the money well enough; but you can just take it away again: I know what you want for it. You want the six old fir-trees that stand outside my house. Things are a sight worse with me than they were a year ago, when you came and asked to buy the trees, but I have no other answer for you than I gave you then: the six trees outside the house are a memory of the old days; and, if I had to sell field and meadow and the cattle in the stable, those trees shall stay where they are; and, if they have to lay me in the grave without a coffin, those old trees shall stay where they are until God's lightning cracks them or the storm fells them."
The last words were spoken with violence; and, with that, the last drop of oil left the press.
But Clements said:
"Forest-farmer, you shall not sell a field, nor a head of cattle from your stable; you shall have a coffin of good white ash-wood: God grant that you may not need it for a long time to come! You shall have good days yet in this world. You shall not sell the old fir-trees, but you shall sell the larch in your wood that are fit for felling. Have you your pocket-book on you? If so, just open it."
I got a fright, when I saw the figure on the bank-note which the tempter had now drawn from his leather case and which, holding it between his finger-tips, he sent fluttering to and fro, like a little flag, before my father's blinking eyes. Misfortune had cleared the way in our house for the timber-merchant: we were no longer able to get all we wanted for our ten heads and stomachs out of that eighty yoke of mountain land; the doctor was sending us letters which I could not read soft and low enough to make them bearable to my father:
"The forest-farmer is hereby summoned within fourteen days to … failing which…."