114 MEEK HERITAGE

the raft. Should a newcomer, on being regaled
with tales about the shrew Mima at Toivola
ask who the woman wras? the answer is, " See
Baptist over there? She's his mother."

Jussi goes ashore, to a different farm again
to-day. His experience is constantly broadening.
The relations between men and women, of which
his knowledge had gained little in exactitude since
his Pig Hill days, become thoroughly clear to
him during the course of this floating season,
He gets drunk and experiences for the first time
that peculiarly human state, which invariably
manages to combine two wholly contrasting
elements.

Life is broad and outwardly care-free, yet at
bottom a vague sense of shelterlessness persists*
When this ends, where then?

Even after the floating season was over Jussi
was not turned adrift. He stayed on as one of
Keinonen's men. In the forests now in the market,
the trees had to be counted before it was safe
to buy them, for here and there farmers had
already begun to set such stiff prices on their forest
that it would have been unwise to close with
them in the old fashion. Jussi thus became one
of the counters, and by the time that job was
finished the lumbering season was soon under
way; the Satakunta forests were being well