s to ask
any questions; so once again Gustavus was saved.

Next day the forester hid him under a load of hay, and prepared to drive
him through the forest to the houses of some friends--foresters like
himself--who lived in a distant village. But Gustavus was not to reach
even this place without undergoing a danger different from those he had
met with before; for while they were jogging peacefully along the road
they came across one of the numerous parties of Danes who were for ever
scouring the country, and on seeing the cart a man stepped up, and
thrust through the hay with his spear. Gustavus, though wounded, managed
not to cry out, but reached, faint with loss of blood, his next
resting-place.

After spending several days hidden among the boughs of a fir-tree, till
the Danes began to think that their information must be false and
Gustavus be looked for elsewhere, the fugitive was guided by one peasant
after another through the forests till he found himself at the head of a
large lake, and in the centre of many thickly-peopled villages. Here he
assembled the dwellers in the country round, and spoke to them in the
churchyard, telling of the wrongs that Sweden had suffered and of her
children that had been slain. The peasants were moved by his words, but
they did not wish to plunge into a war till they were sure of being
successful, so they told Gustavus that they must find out something more
before they took arms; meantime he was driven to seek a fresh
hiding-place.

Gustavus was terribly dejected at the downfall of his hopes, for he had
thought, with the help of the peasants, to raise at once the standard of
rebellion; still he saw that flight was the only chance just now, and
Norway seemed his best refuge. However, some fresh acts of tyranny on
the part of their Danish masters did what Gustavus's own words had
failed to do, and suddenly the peasants took their resolve and sent for
Gustavus to be their leader.

The messengers found him at the foot of the Dovre-Fjeld Mountains
between Norway and Sweden, and he joyfully returned with them, rousing
the people as he went, till at last he had got together a force that far
outnumbered the army which was sent to meet it.

Gustavus was not present at the first battle, which was fought on the
banks of the Dale River, for he was travelling about preaching a rising
among the Swedes of the distant provinces, but he arrived just after, to
find that the peasants had gained an