which is why , one morning at the end of march-some hours before the sun was up , when the frost was hard and the ground still like iron , while fat elfred and his children and odd 's mother were still asleep-odd put on his thickest , warmest clothes , stole a side of smoke-blackened salmon from where it hung in the rafters of fat elfred 's house and a firepot with a handful of glowing embers from the fire ; and he took his father 's second-best axe , which he tied by a leather thong to his belt , and limped out into the woods .