ill be grateful to me for telling you that the elf's
words were to this effect: You were to become a normal human being again
if you would bring back Morten Goosey-Gander that your mother might lay
him on the block and chop his head off."

The boy leaped up.

"That's only one of your base fabrications," he cried indignantly.

"You can ask Akka yourself," said Bataki. "I see her coming up there
with her whole flock. And don't forget what I have told you to-day.
There is usually a way out of all difficulties, if only one can find it.
I shall be interested to see what success you have."

VERMLAND AND DALSLAND

_Wednesday, October fifth_.

To-day the boy took advantage of the rest hour, when Akka was feeding
apart from the other wild geese, to ask her if that which Bataki had
related was true, and Akka could not deny it. The boy made the
leader-goose promise that she would not divulge the secret to Morten
Goosey-Gander. The big white gander was so brave and generous that he
might do something rash were he to learn of the elf's stipulations.

Later the boy sat on the goose-back, glum and silent, and hung his head.
He heard the wild geese call out to the goslings that now they were in
Dalarne, they could see Staedjan in the north, and that now they were
flying over Oesterdal River to Horrmund Lake and were coming to Vesterdal
River. But the boy did not care even to glance at all this.

"I shall probably travel around with wild geese the rest of my life," he
remarked to himself, "and I am likely to see more of this land than I
wish."

He was quite as indifferent when the wild geese called out to him that
now they had arrived in Vermland and that the stream they were following
southward was Klaraelven.

"I've seen so many rivers already," thought the boy, "why bother to look
at one more?"

Even had he been more eager for sight-seeing, there was not very much to
be seen, for northern Vermland is nothing but vast, monotonous forest
tracts, through which Klaraelven winds--narrow and rich in rapids. Here
and there one can see a charcoal kiln, a forest clearing, or a few low,
chimneyless huts, occupied by Finns. But the forest as a whole is so
extensive one might fancy it was far up in Lapland.

A LITTLE HOMESTEAD

_Thursday, October sixth_.

The wild geese followed Klaraelven as far as the big iron foundries at
Monk Fors. Then they proceeded westward to Fryksdalen. Before they got
to Lake Fryken it began to gr