the
larder was always spread for them; while here, after the arduous work of
the day, they must rest on hard benches in a cabin that was worse than
an outhouse. And what they had to eat he could not imagine.

"I wonder if there are any harvest festivals for these labourers?" he
questioned.

A little farther on they saw below them a wretchedly bad road winding
through the forest. It was narrow and zigzag, hilly and stony, and cut
up by brooks in many places. As they flew over it the eagle knew that
the boy was wondering what was carted over a road like that.

"Over this road the harvest was conveyed to the stack," the eagle said.

The boy recalled what fun they had at home when the harvest wagons
drawn by two sturdy horses, carried the grain from the field. The man
who drove sat proudly on top of the load; the horses danced and pricked
up their ears, while the village children, who were allowed to climb
upon the sheaves, sat there laughing and shrieking, half-pleased,
half-frightened. But here the great logs were drawn up and down steep
hills; here the poor horses must be worked to their limit, and the
driver must often be in peril. "I'm afraid there has been very little
cheer along this road," the boy observed.

The eagle flew on with powerful wing strokes, and soon they came to a
river bank covered with logs, chips, and bark. The eagle perceived that
the boy wondered why it looked so littered up down there.

"Here the harvest has been stacked," the eagle told him.

The boy thought of how the grain stacks in his part of the country were
piled up close to the farms, as if they were their greatest ornaments,
while here the harvest was borne to a desolate river strand, and left
there.

"I wonder if any one out in this wilderness counts his stacks, and
compares them with his neighbour's?" he said.

A little later they came to Ljungen, a river which glides through a
broad valley. Immediately everything was so changed that they might well
think they had come to another country. The dark spruce forest had
stopped on the inclines above the valley, and the slopes were clad in
light-stemmed birches and aspens. The valley was so broad that in many
places the river widened into lakes. Along the shores lay a large
flourishing town.

As they soared above the valley the eagle realized that the boy was
wondering if the fields and meadows here could provide a livelihood for
so many people.

"Here live the reapers who mow t