“Oh!  I quite forgot,” said Pekka; “but there it may bide if it isn’t wanted any more,” and with that Pekka drove his pare knife into a rift in the wall.

“There let it rest at leisure,” said father.

But Pekka said never a word more.  A little while after that he began to patch up his boots, stretched on tiptoe to reach down a pare from the rafters, lit it, stuck it in a slit fagot, and sat him down on his little stool by the stove.  We children saw this before father, who stood with his back to Pekka planing away at his axe-shaft under the lamp.  We said nothing, however, but laughed and whispered among ourselves, “If only father sees that, what will he say, I wonder?” And when father did catch sight of him, he planted himself arms akimbo in front of Pekka, and asked him, quite spitefully, what sort of fine work he had there, since he must needs have a separate light all to himself?

“I am only patching up my shoes,” said Pekka to father.

“Oh, indeed!  Patching your shoes, eh?  Then if you can’t see to do that by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your pare into the bath-house or behind it if you like.”

And Pekka went.

He stuck his boots under his arm, took his stool in one hand and his pare in the other, and off he went.  He crept softly through the door into the hall, and out of the hall into the yard.  The pare light flamed outside in the blast, and played a little while, glaring red, over outhouses, stalls, and stables.  We children saw the light through the window and thought it looked very pretty.  But when Pekka bent down to get behind the bath-house door, it was all dark again in the yard, and instead of the pare we saw only the lamp mirroring itself in the dark window-panes.

Henceforth we never burned a pare in the dwelling-room again.  The lamp shone victoriously from the roof, and on Sunday evenings all the townsfolk often used to come to look upon and admire it.  It was known all over the parish that our house was the first, after the parsonage, where the lamp had been used.  After we had set the example, the magistrate bought a lamp like ours, but as he had never learned to light it, he was glad to sell it to the innkeeper, and the innkeeper has it still.

The poorer farmfolk, however, have not been able to get themselves lamps, but even now they do their long evening’s work by the glare of a pare.

But when we had had the lamp a short time, father planed the walls of the dwelling-room all smooth and white, and they never got black again, especially after the old stove, which used to smoke, had to make room for another, which discharged its smoke outside and had a cowl.

Pekka made a new fireplace in the bath-house out of the stones of the old stove, and the crickets flitted thither with the stones—­ at least their chirping was never heard any more in the dwelling room.  Father didn’t care a bit, but we children felt, now and then, during the long winter evenings, a strange sort of yearning after old times, so we very often found our way down to the bath-house to listen to the crickets, and there was Pekka sitting out the long evenings by the light of his pare.