for he had only been allowed to go on condition that he was willing to make himself useful. Later he was regularly sent alone twice a week through the forest to a peasant farm for milk and eggs. The coming and going for these took all of a day. Sometimes the forest was dark and silent; at other times birds called to him, and wild animals, strangely tame, would peep out from the snow-covered brush at him.

Once a merry squirrel enticed him into an old overgrown path. He continued to follow it even after he had lost track of the squirrel until he came to two branches, one of which he decided led in the direction of his destination.

After wandering about for an hour and finding that the trees and the brush were growing denser and denser he grew somewhat alarmed and tried to retrace his steps.

He soon found that this was impossible. Here it occurred to him that if he could get to the top of a tree he might have a better idea of where he was and what to do. So dropping his pail, he scrambled up the nearest willow. This was not high enough to give much of an outlook, and, getting down again, he cast longing eyes on a tall fir with no low branches.

With difficulty he dragged a small uprooted juniper to it and placing it against the trunk, with its help he managed to reach the lowest branch. It was then an easy task to climb to the top of the tree.

There was a very fair outlook from the top but no sign of the farmhouse for which he was bound. There was one thing comforting however. It was that at some distance away something glittered like water.

With a grunt Juhani let himself down and then stood in thought. Only for a moment did he allow himself to do this. He was too well aware of the shortness of the days to dally. Drawing his pukko (knife) he began to hew his way through the thick underbrush, over the springy soil, in the direction of what he knew must be the lake.

Now and then fallen tree trunks had to be scaled. Twice his feet caught in tangled vines and threw him. Several times he had to take the time to climb trees to assure himself that he was going in the right direction. And all the time he had the consciousness that night was descending.

It was already dusk when he reached the lake where, to his great relief, he recognized the spot by means of a big bowlder as being within half a mile of camp.

He saw, however, that in a very few minutes it would be too dark to go further. The only thing to do was to wait until the moon rose. So gathering together as much of the brush as he could, he started it burning and then lay down before it to try to get a little rest.

Despite the fire, which continually had to be replenished, it was very cold and he found it necessary to turn constantly first one side, then the other towards the flames to be at all comfortable.

At last the fire went out and there was nothing left for Juhani to do except sit with his back to the trunk of a nearby tree and wait. When the moon came out, it was a very stiff boy who arose and followed stumblingly the banks of the lake to camp.

Here he found a group of men with his Uncle in the lead, getting ready to start a hunt for him. As soon as he had stammered out his story to his Uncle the latter shook him angrily by the shoulder and ordered him to bed. "Don't you ever try anything of the kind again; at least not while you are on an errand for me," he called after him. And Juhani never did.

The boy won the favor of a driver of one of the short sledges on which the cut-down trees, rough hewn with axes and with the bark peeled off, were drawn, and he sometimes had a ride with him to the lake where men stalked the logs on the banks. On these trips, although he said nothing, he hardly knew whether he admired most how the driver guided the horses over the difficult ground or the intelligence of the alert little Finnish horses themselves.

Sometimes, instead of these trips, he had an opportunity to watch the actual cutting down of the trees. He would sometimes quiver in sympathy as a tree quivered before dashing down against the other trees, perhaps remaining suspended a moment, then coming with a crash to the ground and raising a flurry of snow.

Once a tree was down it was ready to be cleared of branches and then sawed into logs.

In the evening the spring journey of the logs, when they would be floated down the lake and out to sea, was often discussed. Juhani learned how men with long hooks were stationed at the narrow or rocky places on the water to keep the logs from getting blocked. This was difficult and often dangerous. Sometimes it led to loss of life.

While on the lake, the logs would be collected and chained together to form great rafts. Several of these would be fastened behind each other and drawn by a small tug. On these rafts the men would build themselves little huts on which they would live, for it is slow work to get the logs from the forests to the mills. Indeed it almost always takes one or two summers at least.

Sometimes instead of these stories, the men would sing rough songs that sounded out there in the wilds more weird and melancholy than they really were. Sometimes they discussed the future of Finland. There was one fellow among them to whom Juhani loved to listen. He remembered long the man's reply to a particularly pessimistic statement. "Our future depends on ourselves. Have we not the sea? Does it not stand for power and freedom? Shame, I say, on those who do not see it!"

Things in camp went along quietly enough until near the end of the season, when two of the men had a fight which might have ended seriously had they not been separated in time, for both had drawn their pukkos (knives).

Before Juhani left for home the driver invited him to come on a trip much further east than they were stationed. His uncle consented. It gave Juhani an opportunity to see the very primitive and wasteful agricultural methods that are still practiced in Finland in out-of-the-way places, that of burning down the forest to fertilize the land.

They spent the first night with the owner of a place on which this was done. He did his best to entertain them well.

After they had had supper the family gathered around the big rude fireplace, and while the fire crackled and a drink of some kind was passed around the talk drifted to the future prospects of the country. Then the peasant proprietor told of the time when the deposed Tzar of Russia, Nicholas II, through the Manifesto of February fifteenth, 1899, had tried to deprive Finland of most of her independence. "I heard through my young son who had just returned from further South, that signatures for a petition to the Tzar were being sought. 'They shall not lack mine,' I told my wife. It was bitterly cold even for one used to severe months of blinding snow, but I put on my skis and made my way through the dense forest in the face of a harsh wind, to the nearest settlement Here I learned that a messenger gathering signatures had just left. Without stopping for food or drink, I followed the direction he had taken through a frozen swamp and came up with him just before nightfall. And there, with nothing to be seen but snow around us, I signed the paper and returned to the settlement while he went on for another hour to the neighboring hamlet."

"I know of a case to match that somewhat," said the driver. "After the Tzar's Manifesto, a well-to-do farmer, who lived too far away to go to Helsingfors, wrote a petition himself to the Tzar, had it signed by the family, servants and those