Among those sitting around the fire was a man called Jakob, with his two sons, Martin and Michael.

"Oh, stop boring us with your old wives’ tales, Mathias," said Jakob. "No one believes in that stuff anymore. Why not finish our job properly and earn another day’s pay? My sons and I will get up at daybreak as usual, do our share of work, and get out of here before noon. The rest of you can do as you please." With these words Jakob and his two sons stood up and walked back to the log cabin. Soon afterward they were sound asleep.

The others remained sitting quietly around the fire. Those who knew the forest well shared Mathias’s worries. Those who were young and inexperienced did not know whom or what to believe. The uneasy silence was broken only by the plaintive hoot of an owl coming from the direction of the cabin. "I hope this will end well," said old Mathias, shaking his head, and then he stood up. The men put out the fire and retired to the cabin for the night.

At dawn, while the rest of the crew was still asleep, Jakob and his two sons set to work. The mountain echoed with the heavy blows of their axes, and within a few hours they had felled several trees. By the time the rest of the crew rousted themselves out of the cabin, Jakob and his sons had nearly finished their share of work for the day.

"Get to work, you sluggards," Jakob teased the others. "You’ve already wasted half the morning."

Most of the men could still not make up their minds whether to cut the rest of the trees or just pick up and leave. Suddenly they heard a chilling scream. As one man, they all ran toward the source of the terrifying sound.

Under a tall black fir, close to the tree’s roots, lay Michael, Jakob’s younger son. He had stepped into a bear trap. The steel jaws of the huge contraption had snapped shut over his right knee, almost slicing his leg in two. Blood pumped out of the gaping wound, and hard as they tried, the men could not stop the bleeding. In less than ten minutes the lad lay dead in his father’s arms.

The men were stunned. Nobody breathed a word about Mathias’s warning of the previous night, nor did anyone mention the spirits of the forest. They all remained gathered around the lad’s corpse.

Since they were far away from home, Jakob decided to bury his son behind the log cabin. The crew held an overnight wake for him, quiet and orderly but for the sobbing of Jakob. The next morning they performed a simple funeral, marking the boy’s resting place with a white birch cross. Old Mathias spoke at the grave. After reading a passage from the Bible, he begged the spirits of the forest to be content with one life and not harm the crew any further.

But the boy’s father, blinded by grief and infuriated by the old man’s sermon, ran into the cabin and grabbed an oil lamp. Rushing to the edge of the forest, he smashed the lamp against a tree and lit the spilled oil. The tree burst into flames. "Here, forest ghosts," he shrieked. "Take this!" With maddened eyes he stared at the huge flames that quickly engulfed the tree.