n his shoulder.

An autumn morning, solemn and still. The night had been cold, the
morning air was so fresh and light it almost lifted one from the
ground--it seemed almost superfluous to tread at all.

A strange feeling had come upon Olof as he started out. Between the
hedge-stakes on either side of the road hung bridges of the spider's
work--netted and plaited and woven with marvellous art, and here and
there a perfect web, the spider's masterpiece, hung like a wheel of
tiny threads. Then as the sun came up, thread and cable caught its
rays, till the road seemed lined with long festoons of silver, and
decked at intervals with silver shields.

In the forest, too, it was the same--the path lined with silver
hangings on either side, and webs of silver here and there along the
way.

"Spiders bring luck, so they say," thought Olof.

"Well, at any rate, they're showing me the road this morning."

And he strode on briskly, eager to begin.

"To-day's the test," he thought. "All depends on how I manage now. If
it goes well, then I can do what I will. But if I've lost my strength
and will these years between, then--why, I don't know where to turn."

Eagerly, impatiently, he hurried on, trembling with expectation, and
sweating at the brow.

"Maybe I'm taking it too seriously," he thought again. "But, no--it is
life or death to me, this. And I don't know yet what I can do--it may
go either way...."

He swung the axe in a wide circle from the shoulder, held it out at
arm's length, then straight above his head, and swung it to either
side. It weighed as lightly as a leaf, and he felt a childish
delight--as if he had already passed the first test.

* * * * *

He reached the place at last--a hillside covered with tall,
straight-stemmed fir and pine. He flung down coat and hat, never
heeding where, glanced up along the stem he had chosen, then the axe
was lifted, and the steel sank deep into the red wood--it was his
first stroke in his native forest after six years' absence.

The forest answered with a ringing echo from three sides, so loud and
strong that Olof checked his second stroke in mid-air, and turned in
wonder to see who was there.

And the trees faced him with lifted head and untroubled brow, without
nod or smile, but with the greeting of stern men bidding welcome.

"Hei!" Olof answered with a stroke of the axe.

And so they talked together, in question and answer and disput