"Will you tell our fortune?" asked the woodman driver, eying her somewhat askance, when she had stopped. She smiled good naturedly at him, and going to a rude cabinet took from it a kind of drum by means of which she foretold a pleasant return journey on the morrow.
Juhani watched her with simple curiosity; his companion, however, was plainly uneasy, and when they were alone for a minute before lying down to sleep, he whispered, "Awfully uncanny folks, these Lapps are."
The next morning, too, despite the kindly parting, it was plain to Juhani that he was glad to get away. They had another exhilarating ride behind the reindeer. It had a delightful tang to it, a trace of wildness, to which something, even in Juhani's stolid nature, responded.
When they had left their sleds at the home of their Finnish friends the driver grew talkative and told Juhani many stories of other trips to Lapland, one the summer before to this same family. He laughed when he thought of the children. "They would have had a pleasant time gathering berries," he said, "had it not been for the mosquitoes. There were so many of these that they had to wear a sort of mosquito net fastened around the waist. When they tore these or objected too much, their mother rubbed tar all over their hands and faces. My! but they did look funny then," and he laughed so heartily that Juhani could not help but join him.
The man had many other interesting things to tell, for his experiences had been varied. Among other things he explained the old system still in use in parts of Finland of getting tar, an important Finnish industry.
"Those are fine tar trees," he said, when they had come to a clump of fir and larch. "Nothing better. Do you know how they work the thing? Well, the wood, after being cut, is piled high on a big platform that slopes from all sides to the center where there is an opening into a vat underneath. This pile is covered over with a thick layer of earth and grass and then lit from below. It smolders for several days until the pile sinks and a flame springs up. When the tar begins to flow it is caught in barrels. Shafts are afterwards attached to these barrels and they are then drawn by horses to the nearest water and loaded on boats for the coast.