An Everyday Incident, Oddly

A man with hopes was hurrying along the road, but not with such hurry that he continued under the sudden rain. He found a shed at some distance from which he might wait it out, apologizing to the owner for any mess silently and remotely.
From the half-open door he could see the road and far beyond, then the road, then little at all, so thick was the rain and so dark the clouds which made the day a second night. Therefore he doubted he saw a company march down the road opposite his former direction; he doubted, but he shrank back and closed the door by a quarter. He was not so disturbed that he stopped watching.
He doubted even more his interpretation of what succeeded, for he thought that the figures (to call them "people" seemed a presumption) produced shovels or trowels and dug into the road, whereupon one brought forward a sapling and set it there. The figures joined in patting down the upturned soil though the road was paved. They then stood back.
The sapling grew swiftly into a full tree, or something with branches, and the figures waited under those branches, arms upstretched, save for one among them who withdrew a few paces. Above the waiting planters, nuts grew, and then the nuts were swords, and then the swords fell to impale the figures below. But not the one who withdrew; to him the tree bowed. The lone figure stepped forward, removed something from the crown of the tree, turned, and returned up the road. Behind him, the tree bowed lower, touched the ground, and dissolved.
The man, hopeful but not audacious, did not stir till the clouds cleared, or for a time after, but everyone must see to his own affairs. He went on. When first he came across another person, a local he supposed, he wondered whether to inquire about the scene. A decision however was unneeded, for somewhere in his manner or voice as he greeted the local was cause for the latter to smile and ask, "You've had a time, haven't you? Was it the tree, the procession? Else?"
"It may have been a tree."
"Ha! That's the right way to put it."
The local passed by, laughing. Perceiving he intended to say nothing more, the man tried to continue the conversation but had this as the response. "No, it's good news! Good news for you, be glad, but you have to keep going!"
The man did reach his destination. There he did receive the position he hoped to have. Whether the scene during the storm was a portent he never knew, though he thought on it from time to time.
Finis