Victoria

The Miller’s son walked in thought. He was a big lad of fourteen, tanned by sun and wind and full of all manner of ideas.

When he grew up he would go to work in a match factory. It was so jolly and dangerous; he might get his fingers covered with sulphur so that nobody would dare shake hands with him. He would be thought a lot of by his chums on account of his lurid trade.

He looked about in the wood for his birds. For he knew them all, knew where their nests were, understood their cries and had different calls to answer them. More than once he had given them dough balls made of flour from his father’s mill.

All these trees along the path were good friends of his. In spring he had drawn their sap and in winter had been a little father to them, freeing them of snow and helping them to hold up their boughs. And even up in the abandoned granite quarry there wasn’t a stone that was a stranger to him, he had cut letters and signs on them and set them up, arranged them like a congregation around their parson. All kinds of strange things happened in that old granite quarry.