The road ran as broad as any of the regular crown highways, and was still covered with fine yellow gravel.  In fact, it was smoother now than formerly, being free from wheel tracks, and mud, and dust.  Along the edge bloomed roadside flowers and shrubs; dogwood, bittervetch, and buttercups grew there in profusion even to this day, but the ditches were filled in and a whole row of spruce trees had sprung up in them.  Young evergreens of uniform height, with branches from the root up, stood pressing against each other as closely as the foliage of a boxwood hedge; their needles were not dry and hard, but moist and soft, and their tips were all bright with fresh green shoots.  The trees sang and played like humming bees on a fine summer day, when the sun beams down upon them from a clear sky.

When Jan of Ruffluck walked home from church the Sunday he had appeared there for the first time in his royal regalia, he turned in on the old forest road.  It was a warm sunny day and, as he went up the hill, he heard the music of the spruces so plainly that it astonished him.

Never had spruce trees sung like that!  It struck him that he ought to find out why they were so loud-voiced just to-day.  And being in no special haste to reach home, he dropped down in the middle of the smooth gravel road, in the shade of the singing tree.  Laying his stick on the ground, he removed his cap and mopped his brow, then he sat motionless, with hands clasped, and listened.

The air was quite still, therefore it could hardly have been the wind that had set all these little musical instruments into motion.  It was almost as if the spruces played for very joy at being so young and fresh; at being let stand in peace by the abandoned roadside, with the promise of many years of life ahead of them before any human being would come and cut them down.

But if such was the case, it did not explain why the trees sang with such gusto just that day; they could rejoice over those particular blessings any pleasant summer day; they did not call for any extra music.

Jan sat still in the middle of the road, listening with rapt attention.  It was pleasant hearing the hum of the spruce, though it was all on one note, with no rests, so that there was neither melody nor rhythm about it.

He found it so refreshing and delightful up here on the heights.  No wonder the trees felt happy, he mused.  The wonder was they sang and played no better than they did.  He looked up at their small twigs on which every needle was fine and well made, and in its proper place, and drank in the piney odour that came from them.  There was no flower of the meadow, no blossom of the grove so fragrant!  He noted their half-grown cones on which the scales were compactly massed for the protection of the seed.

These trees, which seemed to understand so well what to do for themselves, ought to be able to sing and play so that one could comprehend what they meant.  Yet they kept harping all the while on the same strain.  He grew drowsy listening to them, and stretched himself flat on the smooth, fine gravel to take a little nap.