noticed in Rudolm, the tiny houses, the narrow fields, the heavy sad faces. He thought of the road, “Oscar’s road,” that went to the top of the first hill, and stopped.
“It was hard to make them heed, for they had been deceived once, but in the end they began to listen. The first step needed was to build a road through the forest so that the new valley should not be buried beyond the reach of the world. We got together a little money, the men came with their horses, their axes and picks and, at the summer Festival, with laughing and singing and a few tears too, so great a plan did it seem to some, we began to push our way into the wilderness. But the labor was harder than they thought and the men began to be discouraged and to quarrel and to mutter among themselves, ‘That mad Oscar Dansk, he and his father, they were both dreamers of dreams.’ So the work went slower and slower until we came at last to the top of the hill.
“You see it was Jake who had commenced to make trouble. He began to think that this val-
