' said our Lord.

"The land was already finished in the north and east when Saint Peter
began the work, but the southern and western parts; and the whole
interior, he had created all by himself. Now when our Lord came up
there, where Saint Peter had been at work, he was so horrified that he
stopped short and exclaimed: 'What on earth have you been doing with
this land, Saint Peter?'

"Saint Peter, too, stood and looked around--perfectly astonished. He
had had the idea that nothing could be so good for a land as a great
deal of warmth. Therefore he had gathered together an enormous mass of
stones and mountains, and erected a highland, and this he had done so
that it should be near the sun, and receive much help from the sun's
heat. Over the stone-heaps he had spread a thin layer of soil, and then
he had thought that everything was well arranged.

"But while he was down in Skane, a couple of heavy showers had come up,
and more was not needed to show what his work amounted to. When our
Lord came to inspect the land, all the soil had been washed away, and
the naked mountain foundation shone forth all over. Where it was about
the best, lay clay and heavy gravel over the rocks, but it looked so
poor that it was easy to understand that hardly anything except spruce
and juniper and moss and heather could grow there. But what there was
plenty of was water. It had filled up all the clefts in the mountain;
and lakes and rivers and brooks; these one saw everywhere, to say
nothing of swamps and morasses, which spread over large tracts. And the
most exasperating thing of all was, that while some tracts had too much
water, it was so scarce in others, that whole fields lay like dry moors,
where sand and earth whirled up in clouds with the least little breeze.

"'What can have been your meaning in creating such a land as this?' said
our Lord. Saint Peter made excuses, and declared he had wished to build
up a land so high that it should have plenty of warmth from the sun.
'But then you will also get much of the night chill,' said our Lord,
'for that too comes from heaven. I am very much afraid the little that
can grow here will freeze.'

"This, to be sure, Saint Peter hadn't thought about.

"'Yes, here it will be a poor and frost-bound land,' said our Lord, 'it
can't be helped.'"

When little Mats had gotten this far in his story, Osa, the goose-girl,
protested: "I cannot bear, little Mats, to hear you say that it is so
miserable