_ At dusk, on this same beautiful February day, two young lovers stood talking together in the road. The youth had just driven down from the forest with a big log, which was so heavy that the horse could hardly pull it. All the same he had driven in a roundabout way so that the log might be hauled through the village and past the big white schoolhouse.
The horse had been halted in front of the school, and a young woman had come out to have a look at the log. She couldn't seem to say enough in praise of it--how long and thick it was, and how straight, and what a lovely tan bark it had, and how firm the wood was, and how flawless!
The young man then told her very impressively that it had been grown on a moor far north of Olaf's Peak, and when he had felled it, and how long it had been lying in the forest to dry out. He told her exactly how many inches it measured, both in circumference and diameter.
"But, Ingmar," she said, "it is only the first!"
Pleased as she was, the thought that Ingmar had been five years getting down the first bit of timber toward the building of their new home made her feel uneasy. But Ingmar seemed to think that all difficulties had now been met.
"Just you wait, Gertrude!" he said. "If I can only get the timber hauled while the roads are passable, we'll soon have the house up."
It was turning bitterly cold. The horse stood there all of a shiver, shaking its head and stamping its hoofs, its mane and forelock white with hoar frost. But the youth and the maid did not feel the cold. They kept themselves warm by building their house, in imagination, from cellar to attic. When they had got the house done, they set about to furnish it.
"We'll put the sofa over against the long wall here in the living-room," Ingmar decided.
"But I don't know that we've got any sofa," said Gertrude.
The young man bit his lip. He had not meant to tell her, until some time later, that he had a sofa in readiness at the cabinetmaker's shop; but now he had unwittingly let out the secret.
Then Gertrude, too, came out with something which she had kept from him for five years. She told him that she had made up hair into ornaments and had woven fancy ribbons for sale, and with the money she had earned in this way she had bought all sorts of household things--pots and pans, platters and dishes, sheets and pillow slips, table covers and rugs.
Ingmar was so pleased over what Gertrude had accomplished that he could not seem to commend her enough. In the middle of his praises he broke off abruptly and gazed at her in speechless adoration. He thought it was too good to be true that anything so sweet and so beautiful would some day be his very own.
"Why do you look at me so strangely?" asked the girl.
"I'm just thinking that the best of it all is that you will be mine."
Gertrude could not say anything, but she ran her hand caressingly over the big log which was to form a portion of the wall of that house in which she and Ingmar were to live. She felt that protection and love were in store for her, for the man she was going to marry was good and wise, noble and faithful.
Just then an old woman passed by. She walked rapidly, muttering to herself, as if terribly incensed over something: "Aye, aye, their happiness shall last no longer than from daybreak to rosy dawn. When the trial comes, their faith will be broken as though it were a rope spun from moss, and their lives shall be as a long darkness."
"Surely she can't mean us!" said the young girl.
"How could that apply to us?" laughed the young man. _