Page - 72 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

Clements, “you’ll be needing money, I’m thinking. Look, it’s your guardian angel’s brought me here: I’m bringing you some.” “Oh, my gracious!” replied my father, leaning his whole weight upon the lever, so that the oil-cake in the press had to yield its last drains, which, however, were received into a separate little pot, for these dregs are not quite so clear and mild as the first stream. “Oh, my gracious!” said he. “I could do with the money well enough; but you can just take it away again: I know what you want for it. You want the six old fir-trees that stand outside my house. Things are a sight worse with me than they were a year ago, when you came and asked to buy the trees, but I have no other answer for you than I gave you then: the six trees outside the house are a memory of the old days; and, if I had to sell field and meadow and the cattle in the stable, those trees shall stay where they are; and, if they have to lay me in the grave without a coffin, those old trees shall stay where they are until God’s lightning cracks them or the storm fells them.” The last words were spoken with violence; and, with that, the last drop of oil left the press. But Clements said: “Forest-farmer, you shall not sell a field, nor a head of cattle from your stable; you shall have a coffin of good white ash-wood: God grant that you may not need it for a long time to come! You shall have good days yet in this world. You shall not sell the old fir-trees, but you shall sell the larch in your wood that are fit for felling. Have you your pocket-book on you? If so, just open it.” I got a fright, when I saw the figure on the bank-note which the tempter had now drawn from his leather case and which, holding it between his finger- tips, he sent fluttering to and fro, like a little flag, before my father’s blinking eyes. Misfortune had cleared the way in our house for the timber-merchant: we were no longer able to get all we wanted for our ten heads and stomachs out of that eighty yoke of mountain land; the doctor was sending us letters which I could not read soft and low enough to make them bearable to my father: “The forest-farmer is hereby summoned within fourteen days to … failing which….” “As my patience is at last exhausted, I have placed the matter in the hands of the imperial and royal courts, and if, within eight days … execution and distraint….” Those were more or less the first sentences which I was given to read in our