It was a beautiful day in spring. A peasant and his son were on
their way to the great ironworks, which are situated close to the
southern boundary of the parish. As they lived up at the north end,
they had to traverse almost the entire length of the parish. They
went past newly sown fields, where the grain was just beginning to
spring up. They saw all the green rye fields and all the fine
meadows, where the clover would soon be reddening and sending forth
its sweet fragrance.
They also walked past a number of houses which were being
repainted, and fitted up with new windows and glass-enclosed
verandas, and past gardens where spading and planting were going
on. All whom they met along the way had muddy shoes and grimy hands
from working in fields and vegetable gardens, where they had been
planting potatoes, setting out cabbages, and sowing turnips and
carrots.
The peasant simply had to stop and ask them what kind of potatoes
they were planting and just when they had sown their oats. At sight
of a calf or a foal, he at once began to figure out how old it was.
He calculated the number of cows they would be likely to keep at
such and such a farm, and wondered how much this or that colt would
fetch when broken.
The son tried time after time to turn his father's thought away
from such things. "I'm thinking that you and I will soon be
wandering through the valley of Sharon and the desert of Judea," he
said.
The father smiled, and his face brightened for a moment. "It will
indeed be a blessed privilege to walk in the footsteps of our dear
Lord Jesus," he answered. But the next minute, on seeing a couple
of cartloads of quicklime, his thoughts were diverted. "I say,
Gabriel, who do you suppose is hauling lime? Folks say that lime as
a fertilizer makes a rich crop. That will be something to feast
your eyes on in the fall."
"In the fall, father!" said the son reprovingly.
"Yes, I know," returned the farmer, "that by fall I shall be
dwelling in the tents of Jacob and labouring in the Lord's
vineyard."
"Amen!" cried the son. "So be it. Amen!"
Then they walked on in silence for a space, watching the signs of
spring. Water trickled in the ditches, and the road itself was
badly broken up from the spring rains. Whichever way they looked
there was work to be done. Every one wanted to turn to and help,
even when crossing some field other than his own.
"To tell the truth," said the farmer thoughtfully, "I wish I had
sold my property some fall, when the work was over. It's hard
having to leave it all in the springtime, just when you'd like to
take hold with might and main."
The son only shrugged; he knew that he would have to let the old
man talk.
"It's just thirty-one years now since I, as a young man, bought a
piece of waste land on the north side of this parish," said the
farmer. "The ground had never been touched by a spade. Half of it
was bog, the other half a mass of stones. It looked pretty bad. On
that very land I worked like a slave, digging up stones until my
back was ready to break. But I think I laboured even harder with
the swamp, before I finally got it drained and filled in."
"Yes, you have certainly worked hard, father," the son admitted.
"This is why God thinks of you, and summons you to His Holy Land."
"At first," the farmer went on, "I lived in a hovel that wasn't
much better than a charcoaler's hut. It was made of unstripped
logs, with only sod for a roof. I could never make that but water
tight; so the rains always came in. It was mighty uncomfortable,
especially at night. The cow and the horse fared no better than I;
the whole of the first winter they were housed in a mud cave that
was as dark as a cellar."
"Father, how can you be so attached to a place where you have
suffered such hardships?"
"But only think of the joy of it when I was able to build a big
barn for the animals, and when year by year my livestock increased
so that I was always having to add new extensions for housing them.
If I were not going to sell the place now, I should have to put a
new roof on the barn. This would have been just the time to do it--
as soon as I'd finished with the sowing."
"Father, you are to do your sowing in that land where some seeds
fall among thorns, some on stony ground, some by the wayside, and
some on good ground."
"And the old cottage," the farmer pursued, "which I built after the
first hut, I had thought of pulling down this year, to put up a
fine new dwelling house. What's to be done now with all the timber
that we two hauled home in the winter? It was mighty tough work
getting it down. The horses were hard driven, and so were we."
The son began to feel troubled. He thought his father was slipping
away from him. He feared that the old man was not going to offer
his property to the Lord in the right spirit. "Well," he argued,
"but what are new houses and barns as compared with the blessed
privilege of living a pure life among people who are of one mind?"
"Hallelujah!" cried the father. "Don't you suppose I know that a
wonderful portion has been allotted to us? Am I not on my way to
the works to sell my property to the Company? When I come back this
way everything will be gone, and I shall have nothing I can call
mine."
The son did not reply, but he was pleased to hear that his father
still held to his decision.
Presently they came to a farm beautifully situated on a hill. There
was a white-painted dwelling house, with a balcony and a veranda,
and round the house were tall poplars whose pretty silvery stems
were swollen with sap.
"Look!" said the farmer. "That was just the sort of house I meant
to have--with a veranda and a balcony and a lot of ornamental
woodwork, and with just such a well-mown lawn in front. Wouldn't
that have been nice, Gabriel?"
As the son said nothing, the farmer concluded that he must be tired
of hearing about the farm, so he, too, lapsed into silence although
his thoughts were still upon his home. He wondered how the horses
would fare with their new owners, and how things in general would
be run on the place. "My goodness!" he muttered under his breath,
"I'm surely doing a foolish thing in selling out to a corporation!
They'll go and cut down all the trees, and let the farm go to
waste. It would be just like them to allow the land to become
marshy again, and to let the birch woods grow down into the
fields."
They had at last reached the works, where the farmer's interest
was again roused. There he saw ploughs and harrows of the latest
pattern, and was suddenly reminded that for a long time he had been
thinking of getting a new reaper. Gazing fondly at his good-looking
son, he pictured him sitting on a fine, red-painted reaper,
cracking his whip over the horses, and mowing down the thick,
waving grass, as a war hero mows down his enemies. And as he
stepped into the office he seemed to hear the clicking noise of the
reaper, the soft swish of falling grass and the shrill chirp and
light flutter of frightened birds and insects.
On the desk in there lay the deed. The negotiations had been
concluded, and the price settled upon; all that was needed to
complete the deal was his signature.
While the deed was being read to him he sat quietly listening. He
heard that there were so and so many acres of woodland, and so and
so many of arable land and meadow, so and so many head of cattle,
and such and such household furnishings, all of which he must turn
over. His features became set.
"No," he said to himself, "it mustn't happen."
After the reading he was about to say that he had changed his
mind, when his son bent down and whispered to him:
"Father, it's a choice between me and the farm, for I'm going
anyway no matter what you do."
The peasant had been so completely taken up with thoughts of his
farm that it had not occurred to him that his son would leave him.
So Gabriel would go in any case! He could not quite make this out.
He would never have thought of leaving had his son decided to
remain at home. But, naturally, wherever his son went, he, too,
must go.
He stepped up to the desk, where the deed was now spread out for
him to sign. The manager himself handed him the pen, and pointed to
the place where he was to write his name.
"Here," he said, "here's where you write your name in full--'Hök
Matts Ericsson.'"
When he took the pen it flashed across his mind how, thirty-one
years back, he had signed a deed whereby he had acquired a bit of
barren land. He remembered that after writing his name, he had gone
out to inspect his new property. Then this thought had come to him:
"See what God has given you! Here you have work to keep you going a
lifetime."
The manager, thinking his hesitancy was due to uncertainty as to
where he should write his name, again pointed to the place.
"The name must be written there. Now write 'Hök Matts Ericsson.'"
He put the pen to the paper. "This," he mused, "I write for the
sake of my faith and my soul's salvation; for the sake of my dear
friends the Hellgumists, that I may be allowed to live with them in
the unity of the spirit, and so as not to be left alone here when
they all go."
And he wrote his first name.
"And this," he went on thinking, "I write for the sake of my son
Gabriel, so I shan't have to lose the dear, good lad who has always
been so kind to his old father, and to let him see that after all
he is dearer to me than aught else."
And then he wrote his middle name.
"But this," he thought as he moved the pen for the third time, "why
do I write this?" Then, all at once, his hand began to move, as of
itself, up and down the page, leaving great black streaks upon the
hateful document. "This I do because I'm an old man and must go on
tilling the soil--go on plowing and sowing in the place where I
have always worked and slaved."
Hök Matts Ericsson looked rather sheepish when he turned to the
manager and showed him the paper.
"You'll have to excuse me, sir," he said. "It really was my
intention to part with my property, but when it came to the
scratch, I couldn't do it."