k where he was, and the King sent letters
demanding his surrender; but the burghers of the Hanse town hated
Christian with cause, and would not give him up. Then came Gustav's
warder who had gone bail for him in sixteen hundred gulden, and
pleaded for his prisoner.

"I am not a prisoner," was Gustav's retort, "I am a hostage, for
whom the Danish king pledged his oath and faith. If any one can
prove that I was taken captive in a fight or for just cause, let him
stand forth. Ambushed was I, and betrayed." The Luebeck men thought
of the plots King Christian was forever hatching against them. Now,
if he succeeded in getting Sweden under his heel, their turn would
come next. Better, they said, send this Gustav home to his own
country, perchance he might keep the King busy there; by which they
showed their good sense. His ex-keeper was packed off back home, and
Gustav reached Sweden, sole passenger on a little coast-trader, on
May 31, 1520. A stone marks the spot where he landed, near Kalmar;
for then struck the hour of Sweden's freedom.

But not yet for many weary months did the people hear its summons.
Swedish manhood was at its lowest ebb. Stockholm was held by the
widow of Sten Sture with a half-famished garrison. In Kalmar another
woman, Anna Bjelke, commanded, but her men murmured, and the fall of
the fortress was imminent. When Gustav Vasa, who had slipped in
unseen, exhorted them to stand fast, they would have mobbed him. He
left as he had come, the day before the surrender. Travelling by
night, he made his way inland, finding everywhere fear and distrust.
The King had promised that if they would obey him "they should
never want for herring and salt," so they told Gustav, and when he
tried to put heart into them and rouse their patriotism, they took
up bows and arrows and bade him be gone. Indeed, there were not
wanting those who shot at him. Like a hunted deer he fled from
hamlet to hamlet. Such friends as he had left advised him to throw
himself upon the King's mercy; told him of the amnesty proclaimed.
But Gustav's thoughts dwelt grimly among the Northern mountaineers
whom as a boy he had bragged he would set against the tyrant.
Insensibly he shaped his course toward their country.

He was with his brother-in-law, Joachim Brahe, when the King's
message bidding him to the coronation came. Gustav begged him not to
go, but Brahe's wife and children were within Christian's reach, and
he did not dare stay away. When