read.

"It must be because I got it in such a nice way that it tastes so good
to me," he said.

The golden eagle had left Medelpad the evening before. He had hardly
crossed the border into Angermanland when the boy caught a glimpse of a
fertile valley and a river, which surpassed anything of the kind he had
seen before.

As the boy glanced down at the rich valley, he complained of feeling
hungry. He had had no food for two whole days, he said, and now he was
famished. Gorgo did not wish to have it said that the boy had fared
worse in his company than when he travelled with the wild geese, so he
slackened his speed.

"Why haven't you spoken of this before?" he asked. "You shall have all
the food you want. There's no need of your starving when you have an
eagle for a travelling companion."

Just then the eagle sighted a farmer who was sowing a field near the
river strand. The man carried the seeds in a basket suspended from his
neck, and each time that it was emptied he refilled it from a seed sack
which stood at the end of the furrow. The eagle reasoned it out that the
sack must be filled with the best food that the boy could wish for, so
he darted toward it. But before the bird could get there a terrible
clamour arose about him. Sparrows, crows, and swallows came rushing up
with wild shrieks, thinking that the eagle meant to swoop down upon some
bird.

"Away, away, robber! Away, away, bird-killer!" they cried. They made
such a racket that it attracted the farmer, who came running, so that
Gorgo had to flee, and the boy got no seed.

The small birds behaved in the most extraordinary manner. Not only did
they force the eagle to flee, they pursued him a long distance down the
valley, and everywhere the people heard their cries. Women came out and
clapped their hands so that it sounded like a volley of musketry, and
the men rushed out with rifles.

The same thing was repeated every time the eagle swept toward the
ground. The boy abandoned the hope that the eagle could procure any food
for him. It had never occurred to him before that Gorgo was so much
hated. He almost pitied him.

In a little while they came to a homestead where the housewife had just
been baking. She had set a platter of sugared buns in the back yard to
cool and was standing beside it, watching, so that the cat and dog
should not steal the buns.

The eagle circled down to the yard, but dared not alight right under the
eyes of the peasant woma