"Merciful heaven, what a spring will this be for me!" thought
Elsalill. "No joy and no happiness can bloom for me after the
chills of this winter.

"No more than a year ago I was so happy when winter was past and
spring came," she thought. "I remember one evening which was so
fair that I could not sit within doors. So I took my foster sister
by the hand, and we went out into the fields to fetch green
boughs and deck the stove.

She recalled to mind how she and her foster sister had walked along
a green pathway. And there by the side of the way they had seen a
young birch that had been cut down. The wood showed that it had
been cut many days before. But now they saw that the poor lopped
tree had begun to put forth leaves and its buds were bursting.

Then her foster sister had stopped and bent over the tree. "Ah,
poor tree," she said, "what evil can you have done, that you are
not suffered to die, though you are cut down? What makes you put
forth leaves, as though you still lived?"

And Elsalill had laughed at her and answered: "Maybe it grows so
sweet and green that he who cut it down may see the harm he has
wrought and feel remorse."

But her foster sister did not laugh with her, and there were tears
in her eyes. "It is terrible for a dead man if he cannot rest in
his grave. They who are dead have small comfort to look for;
neither love nor happiness can reach them. All the good they yet