em with
outstretched hands, they grabbed hold of each other, took a couple of
steps backward, and looked scared to death.

When the boy noticed their terror he woke up and remembered who he was.
And then it seemed to him that nothing worse could happen to him than
that those children should see how he had been bewitched. Shame and
grief because he was no longer a human being overpowered him. He turned
and fled. He knew not whither.

But a glad meeting awaited the boy when he came down to the heath. For
there, in the heather, he spied something white, and toward him came the
white goosey-gander, accompanied by Dunfin. When the white one saw the
boy running with such speed, he thought that dreadful fiends were
pursuing him. He flung him in all haste upon his back and flew off with
him.

THE OLD PEASANT WOMAN

_Thursday, April fourteenth_.

Three tired wanderers were out in the late evening in search of a night
harbour. They travelled over a poor and desolate portion of northern
Smaland. But the sort of resting place which they wanted, they should
have been able to find; for they were no weaklings who asked for soft
beds or comfortable rooms. "If one of these long mountain-ridges had a
peak so high and steep that a fox couldn't in any way climb up to it,
then we should have a good sleeping-place," said one of them. "If a
single one of the big swamps was thawed out, and was so marshy and wet
that a fox wouldn't dare venture out on it, this, too, would be a right
good night harbour," said the second. "If the ice on one of the large
lakes we travel past were loose, so that a fox could not come out on
it, then we should have found just what we are seeking," said the third.

The worst of it was that when the sun had gone down, two of the
travellers became so sleepy that every second they were ready to fall to
the ground. The third one, who could keep himself awake, grew more and
more uneasy as night approached. "Then it was a misfortune that we came
to a land where lakes and swamps are frozen, so that a fox can get
around everywhere. In other places the ice has melted away; but now
we're well up in the very coldest Smaland, where spring has not as yet
arrived. I don't know how I shall ever manage to find a good
sleeping-place! Unless I find some spot that is well protected, Smirre
Fox will be upon us before morning."

He gazed in all directions, but he saw no shelter where he could lodge.
It was a dark and chilly n