id Ole. "Don't you think I know?"

"What else did he do?" asked Lisbeth.

"The king and queen then went around and spoke to all the other people,
who began to take out long spyglasses and gaze in all directions and
ask the name of everything.

"The county magistrate, as the highest of the local officials, stood
near the king and queen and pointed things out to them.

"'See that group of distant white peaks,' said the magistrate; 'and
there to the north is Snow-Cap, although I am not sure that you can
distinguish it; and that little black thing farthest away' (Ole pointed
as the magistrate had done) 'is the highest peak in Norway.'[15]

[15] The mountain referred to is Galdhoepiggen.

"After a while the company turned around, facing the south. When they
saw the view in that direction,--with the great shining lake lying so
far away down there, and the forests stretching farther and farther in
the distance,--even the king himself was astonished. He thought that
the forests must reach almost to Sweden. He had never seen so vast an
extent of forest at one view, king though he was. When they had
finished looking at the surrounding landscape, Nordrum went to that
patch of reindeer moss over there and gathered a whole handful of it. A
good many of the people wondered, of course, what he was going to do
with it. He went over to the king, showed it to him, and then said,
'Should you like to see the moss that we mixed with birch bark to make
bread during the war?'

"The king took a piece and chewed it. 'Yes, there is bird lime in it,'
he said.

"Nobody else had moved or spoken since Nordrum picked the moss,--they
were so surprised. At last father heard one of the officers say, 'It is
astonishing how tactless these farmers can be!'"

"What is _tactless_?" asked Lisbeth.

"Oh, I don't know; but no doubt it is something pleasant, for the king
clapped Nordrum on the shoulder and said: 'Thanks, my good man. We can
all thank God that there are happier days in Norway now.'

"'That was what I was thinking of when I showed you the moss,' said
Nordrum.

"Then they took the king to the great heap of stones that was piled up
as a memorial of his visit, and asked him to scratch his name upon the
stone slab beside it. And so he did, '_O. S._,' which stands for Oscar
and Sophia; and then the number of the year, too,--see, here it is! It
was all cut into the slab afterwards, exactly as the king himself had
scratched it."

T