went about with savage glee, thinking of
the hour when he might venture to kill Helpless.

But the caterpillars, meanwhile, had spread over miles of pine woods.
Not in one summer did the disease reach them all. Many lived to become
pupas and moths.

Grayskin sent messages to his friend Karr by the birds of passage, to
say that he was alive and faring well. But the birds told Karr
confidentially that on several occasions Grayskin had been pursued by
poachers, and that only with the greatest difficulty had he escaped.

Karr lived in a state of continual grief, yearning, and anxiety. Yet he
had to wait two whole summers more before there was an end of the
caterpillars!

Karr no sooner heard the game-keeper say that the forest was out of
danger than he started on a hunt for Helpless. But when he was in the
thick of the forest he made a frightful discovery: He could not hunt any
more, he could not run, he could not track his enemy, and he could not
see at all!

During the long years of waiting, old age had overtaken Karr. He had
grown old without having noticed it. He had not the strength even to
kill a water-snake. He was not able to save his friend Grayskin from his
enemy.

RETRIBUTION

One afternoon Akka from Kebnekaise and her flock alighted on the shore
of a forest lake.

Spring was backward--as it always is in the mountain districts. Ice
covered all the lake save a narrow strip next the land. The geese at
once plunged into the water to bathe and hunt for food. In the morning
Nils Holgersson had dropped one of his wooden shoes, so he went down by
the elms and birches that grew along the shore, to look for something to
bind around his foot.

The boy walked quite a distance before he found anything that he could
use. He glanced about nervously, for he did not fancy being in the
forest.

"Give me the plains and the lakes!" he thought. "There you can see what
you are likely to meet. Now, if this were a grove of little birches, it
would be well enough, for then the ground would be almost bare; but how
people can like these wild, pathless forests is incomprehensible to me.
If I owned this land I would chop down every tree."

At last he caught sight of a piece of birch bark, and just as he was
fitting it to his foot he heard a rustle behind him. He turned quickly.
A snake darted from the brush straight toward him!

The snake was uncommonly long and thick, but the boy soon saw that it
had a white spot on each