in. If it happened to be winter and
she saw many teams on the roads she hurriedly blew up a blizzard, piling
the drifts so high that people could barely get back to their homes by
evening. If it chanced to be summer and good harvest weather,
Ysaetter-Kaisa would sit quietly until the first hayricks had been
loaded, then down she would come with a couple of heavy showers, which
put an end to the work for that day.

It was only too true that she seldom thought of anything else than
raising mischief. The charcoal burners up in the Kil mountains hardly
dared take a cat-nap, for as soon as she saw an unwatched kiln, she
stole up and blew on it until it began to burn in a great flame. If the
metal drivers from Laxa and Svarta were out late of an evening,
Ysaetter-Kaisa would veil the roads and the country round about in such
dark clouds that both men and horses lost their way and drove the heavy
trucks down into swamps and morasses.

If, on a summer's day, the dean's wife at Glanshammar had spread the tea
table in the garden and along would come a gust of wind that lifted the
cloth from the table and turned over cups and saucers, they knew who had
raised the mischief! If the mayor of Oerebro's hat blew off, so that he
had to run across the whole square after it; if the wash on the line
blew away and got covered with dirt, or if the smoke poured into the
cabins and seemed unable to find its way out through the chimney, it was
easy enough to guess who was out making merry!

Although Ysaetter-Kaisa was fond of all sorts of tantalizing games, there
was nothing really bad about her. One could see that she was hardest on
those who were quarrelsome, stingy, or wicked; while honest folk and
poor little children she would take under her wing. Old people say of
her that, once, when Asker church was burning, Ysaetter-Kaisa swept
through the air, lit amid fire and smoke on the church roof, and averted
the disaster.

All the same the Naerke folk were often rather tired of Ysaetter-Kaisa,
but she never tired of playing her tricks on them. As she sat on the
edge of a cloud and looked down upon Naerke, which rested so peacefully
and comfortably beneath her, she must have thought: "The inhabitants
would fare much too well if I were not in existence. They would grow
sleepy and dull. There must be some one like myself to rouse them and
keep them in good spirits."

Then she would laugh wildly and, chattering like a magpie, would rush
off,