On the mountain's broad back, where Gorgo left Thumbietot, there had been a forest fire ten years before. Since that time the trees had been felled and removed, and the great fire-swept area had begun to deck itself with green along the edges, where it skirted the healthy forest. However, the larger part of the top was still barren and . Charred , sentinel-like between the rock , bore witness that once there had been a fine forest here; but no fresh roots sprang from the ground.  
One day in the early summer all the children in the parish had assembled in front of the schoolhouse near the fire-swept mountain. Each child carried either a spade or a hoe on its shoulder, and a basket of food in its hand. As soon as all were assembled, they marched in a long procession toward the forest. The banner came first, with the teachers on either side of it; then followed a couple of foresters and a load of pine and spruce seeds; then the children.
 
The procession did not pause in any of the birch near the settlements, but marched on deep into the forest. As it moved along, the foxes stuck their heads out of the in , and wondered what kind of backwoods people these were. As they marched past old coal pits where were fired every autumn, the cross-beaks twisted their hooked bills, and asked one another what kind of coalers these might be who were now the forest.
 
Finally, the procession reached the big, burnt mountain plain. The rocks had been stripped of the fine twin-flower creepers that once covered them; they had been robbed of the pretty silver and the attractive moss. Around the dark water gathered in and hollows there was now no wood-sorrel. The little patches of soil in and between stones were without ferns, without star-flowers, without all the green and red and light and soft and things which usually clothe the forest ground.
 
It was as if a bright light flashed upon the mountain when all the parish children covered it. Here again was something sweet and delicate; something fresh and ; something young and growing. Perhaps these children would bring to the poor abandoned forest a little new life.
 
When the children had rested and eaten their , they seized hoes and spades and began to work. The foresters showed them what to do. They set out after shrub on every clear spot of earth they could find.
 
As they worked, they talked quite knowingly among themselves of how the little shrubs they were planting would the soil so that it could not get away, and of how new soil would form under the trees. By and by seeds would drop, and in a few years they would be picking both strawberries and raspberries where now there were only bare rocks. The little shrubs which they were planting would gradually become tall trees. Perhaps big houses and great splendid ships would be built from them!
 
If the children had not come here and planted while there was still a little soil in the clefts, all the earth would have been carried away by wind and water, and the mountain could never more have been clothed in green.
 
"It was well that we came,&quo............