ld not yet make up their minds what to do, and
begged him to seek safer quarters for himself, since he was being
everywhere diligently sought by his pursuers.

In fact, his peril continued extreme and for some days he was forced to
lie hidden under Morkarlely Bridge, near Mora Church, though it was in
the dead of a Swedish winter. He was able at length to resume his
journey, but it was with an almost despairing heart, for he could see no
hope either for himself or for his country. His led way over mountains
and through desolate valleys, his nights being spent in wayside sheds
which had been built for the shelter of travellers. On he went, through
forests filled with snow and along the side of mountain torrents, and
finally came within view of the lofty mountains beyond which lay the
sister kingdom of Norway.

Never had patriot more reason to be disheartened than the unhappy and
hunted fugitive, never had the hope of liberating an oppressed country
seemed darker, and the fugitive would have been justified in abandoning
his native land and seeking a refuge in the bleak hills of Norway. Yet
the adage has often held good that it is the darkest hour before the dawn
of day, and so it was to prove in his case. While he waited in that
desolate quarter to which he had been driven, events were shaping
themselves in his favor and the first rising took place against the
Danes.

The stirring speech of the young noble at Mora Church had not been made
in vain. Many of those who heard it had been strongly taken by his
manliness and his powerful language, and, strangely, the most deeply
impressed of all was Rasmas Jute, a Dane who had served the Stures and
was now settled in Dalarna.

Hearing that a Danish steward had come to that quarter to seek the
fugitive and was now at the house of the sergeant of Mora parish, he
armed himself and his servants and fell on the steward unawares, the
first to take arms for Gustavus being thus a man of Danish birth. Soon
afterwards a troop of Danish horsemen, a full hundred in number, was
seen marching over the frozen surface of Lake Silja. So numerous a body
of soldiers was unusual in those parts, and suspecting that they were in
search of Gustavus, and might do something to their own injury, the
peasants began ringing the church bells, the usual summons to arms.

The wind carried the sound far to the northward, and on hearing the
warning peal the peasantry seized their arms and bodies of them we