from you. Go to it, knock thrice on the trunk, and ask, ‘Is the Crooked One at home?’ The rest will follow.” With these words the stranger hastened away and was out of sight in a moment. The peasant also went his way, and soon forgot all about the matter. Well, time went by and part of the stranger’s prophecy came true. For the peasant turned soldier and served in a cavalry regiment for years. One day, when he was quartered with his regiment in the north of Finland, it fell to his turn to tend the horses while his comrades were roistering in the tavern. Suddenly a great yearning for home, such as he had never known before, came over the lonely trooper; tears started to his eyes, and dear visions of his native land crowded on his soul. Then he bethought him of the sleeping stranger in the wood, and the whole scene came back to him as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. He looked up, and there, strange to tell, he was aware of a crooked birch-tree right in front of him. More in jest than in earnest he went up to it and did as the stranger had bidden him. Hardly had the words, “Is the Crooked One at home?” passed his lips when the stranger himself stood before him and said, “I am glad you have come. I feared you had forgotten me. You wish to be at home, do you not?” The trooper said yes, he did. Then the Crooked One cried into the tree, “Young folks, which of you is the fleetest?” A voice from the birch replied, “Father, I can run as fast as a moor-hen flies.” “Well, I need a fleeter messenger to-day.” A second voice answered, “I can run like the wind.” “I need a swifter envoy,” said the father. Then a third voice cried, “I can run like the thought of man.” “You are after my own heart. Fill a bag full of gold and take it with my friend and benefactor to his home.” Then he caught the soldier by the hat, crying, “The hat to the man, and the man to the house!” The same moment the soldier felt his hat fly from his head. When he looked about for it, lo! he was at home in the old familiar parlour wearing his old peasant clothes, and the great sack of money stood beside him. Yet on parade and at the roll-call he was never missed. When the man who told this story was asked, “Who could the stranger be?” he answered, “Who but a tree-elf?”[283]