ithout armor. The letters
that passed between them were hardly kingly. King Christian wrote
that he had other things to do: "Better catch a doctor, old man, and
have your head-piece looked after." Helpless anger killed Karl, and
Gustav Adolf, of whom the world was presently to hear, took the
command and the crown. After that Christian had a harder road to
hoe.

A foretaste of it came to him when he tried to surprise the fortress
of Gullberg near the present Goetaborg. Its commander was wounded
early in the fight, but his wife who took his place more than filled
it. She and her women poured boiling lye upon the attacking Danes
until they lay "like scalded pigs" under the walls. Their leader
knew when he had enough and made off in haste, with the lady
commandant calling after him, "You were a little unexpected for
breakfast, but come back for dinner and we will receive you
properly." She would not even let them take their dead away. "Since
God gave us luck to kill them," she said, "we will manage to bury
them too." They were very pious days after their own fashion, and
God was much on the lips of his servants. Troubles rarely come
singly. Soon after, King Christian met the enemy unexpectedly and
was so badly beaten that for the second time he had to run for it,
though he held out till nearly all his men had fallen. His horse got
mired in a swamp with the pursuers close behind. The gay and wealthy
Sir Christen Barnekow, who had been last on the field, passed him
there, and at once got down and gave him his horse. It meant giving
up his life, and when Sir Christen could no longer follow the
fleeing King he sat down on a rock with the words, "I give the King
my horse, the enemy my life, and God my soul." The rock is there yet
and the country folk believe that the red spots in the granite are
Christen Barnekow's blood which all the years have not availed to
wash out.

They tired of fighting at last and made it up. Sweden paid Denmark a
million daler; for the rest, things stayed as they had been before.
King Christian had shown himself no mean fighter, but the senseless
sacking and burning of town and country that was an ugly part of
those days' warfare went against his grain, and he tried to persuade
the Swedes to agree to leave that out in future. Gustav Adolf had
not yet grown into the man he afterward became. "As to the burning,"
was his reply, "seeing that it is the usage of war, and we enemies,
why we will each have