the travelers were provided
with. All three wore their best clothes, and each carried a lunch bag
full of food on his back and a stout stick in his hand. The trip was so
long that it would take a whole day.

Once more they blew their horns,--all three together. The animals
looked up in surprise at the unusual volume of sound, and the milkmaid
came to the cow-house door with a smiling face. Then off the party
started. The flocks were mingled together to-day, and driven straight
ahead,--no time for them to graze by the wayside with Glory Peak lying
so far away, blue against the sky. This excursion was a much longer one
than Lisbeth had ever before taken, and even Ole and Peter had been to
Glory Peak but once.

* * * * *

It was drawing on toward dinner time when they came to the last gentle
ascent leading to the top of Glory Peak. There the juniper bushes and
"old woman's switches" (dwarf birch) grew so high that the animals were
quite lost to sight among them. Lisbeth and the boys could only see the
course of their charges by a wavelike movement that passed over the
tops of the bushes and by the sticking up of a pair of horns here and
there. Ole thought that this was a good place to leave the flocks for a
time, while they themselves went on ahead. The animals were so tired
and hungry that they would stay there quietly for an hour or so; then,
when rested, they would be sure to follow to the peak, for a goat was
never satisfied until it had mounted to the highest possible point,
where it could look about in all directions. Ole's plan was assented
to, and it proved to be a good one.

Ole led Lisbeth and Peter around a curve toward the north. He wanted to
show them exactly where the king and queen came up on the day of their
visit. To be sure, they were not really king and queen that day, but
they were on the very point of being: they were crown prince and crown
princess. They had left their horses down on the mountain side where
the road grew too steep for driving, and had walked the rest of the
way. Oh, what a large company they had with them!--the county
magistrate, the district judge, and officers so richly dressed that
they could scarcely move. Seven or eight of the principal farmers of
the district were also in the company, and first among these were
Nordrum, Jacob's master, and the master of Hoel Farm, who was then
living. These two wore queer old-fashioned swallow-tailed