The wonderful adventures of nils

t out under the steps of Bollnas cottage.”
The old Laplander looked surprised, but there was no time for Clement to explain further, as he had to be off to the railway station.
The Laplander went down to the zoological village to purchase the bowl. As he saw no blue one that he thought appropriate, he bought a white one, and this he conscientiously filled and set out every morning.
That was why the boy had not been released from his pledge. He knew that Clement had gone away, but he was not allowed to leave.
That night the boy longed more than ever for his freedom. This was because summer had come now in earnest. During his travels he had suffered much in cold and stormy weather, and when he first came to Skansen he had thought that perhaps it was just as well that he had been compelled to break the journey. He would have been frozen to death had he gone to Lapland in the month of May. But now it was warm; the earth was green-clad, birches and poplars were clothed in their satiny foliage, and the cherry trees-in fact all the fruit trees-were covered with blossoms. The berry bushes had green berries on their stems; the oaks had carefully unfolded their leaves, and peas, cabbages, and beans were growing in the vegetable garden at Skansen.
“Now it must be warm up in Lapland,” thought the boy. “I should like to be seated on Morten Goosey-Gander`s back on a fine morning like this! It would be great fun to ride around in the warm, still air, and look down at the ground, as it now lies decked with green grass, and embellished with pretty blossoms.”
He sat musing on this when the eagle suddenly swooped down from the sky, and perched beside the boy, on top of the cage.
“I wanted to try my wings to see if they were still good for anything,” said Gorgo. “You didn`t suppose that I meant to leave you here in captivity? Get up on my back, and I`ll take you to your comrades.”
“No, that`s impossible!” the boy answered. “I have pledged my word that I would stay here till I am liberated.”
“What sort of nonsense are you talking?” protested Gorgo. “In the first place they brought you here against your will; then they forced you to promise that you would remain here. Surely you must understand that such a promise one need not keep?”
“Oh, no, I must keep it,” said the boy. “I thank you all the same for your kind intention, but you can`t help me.”
“Oh, can`t I?” said Gorgo. “We`ll see about that!” In a twinkling he grasped Nils Holgersson in his big talons, and rose with him toward the skies, disappearing in a northerly direction.
ON OVER GASTRIKLAND
THE PRECIOUS GIRDLE
Wednesday, June fifteenth.
The eagle kept on flying until he was a long distance north of Stockholm. Then he sank to a wooded hillock where he relaxed his hold on the boy.
The instant Thumbietot was out of Gorgo`s clutches he started to run back to the city as fast as he could.
The eagle made a long swoop, caught up to the boy, and stopped him with his claw.
“Do you propose to go back to prison?” he demanded.
“That`s my affair. I can go where I like, for all of you!” retorted the boy, trying to get away. Thereupon the eagle gripped him with his strong talons, and rose in the air.
Now Gorgo circled over the entire province of Uppland and did not stop again until he came to the great water-falls at Alvkarleby where he alighted on a rock in the middle of the rushing rapids below the roaring falls. Again he relaxed his hold on the captive.
The boy saw that here there was no chance of escape from the eagle. Above them the white scum wall of the water-fall came tumbling down, and round about the river rushed along in a mighty torrent. Thumbietot was very indignant to think that in this way he had been forced to become a promise-breaker. He turned his back to the eagle and would not speak to him.
Now that the bird had set the boy down in a place from which he could not run away, he told him confidentially that he had been brought up by Akka from Kebnekaise, and that he had quarrelled with his foster-mother.
“Now, Thumbietot, perhaps you understand why I wish to take you back to the wild geese,” he said. “I have heard that you are in great favour with Akka, and it was my purpose to ask you to make peace between us.”
As soon as the boy comprehended that the eagle had not carried him off in a spirit of contrariness, he felt kindly toward him.
“I should like very much to help you,” he returned, “but I am bound by my promise.” Thereupon he explained to the eagle how he had fallen into captivity and how Clement Larsson had left Skansen without setting him free.
Nevertheless the eagle would not relinquish his plan.
“Listen to me, Thumbietot,” he said. “My wings can carry you wherever you wish to go, and my eyes can search out whatever you wish to find. Tell me how the man looks who exacted this promise from you, and I will find him and take you to him. Then it is for you to do the rest.”
Thumbietot approved of the proposition.
“I can see, Gorgo, that you have had a wise bird like Akka for a foster-mother,” the boy remarked.
He gave a graphic description of Clement Larsson, and added that he had heard at Skansen that the little fiddler was from Halsingland.
“We`ll search for him through the whole of Halsingland-from Ljungby to Mellansjo; from Great Mountain to Hornland,” said the eagle. “To-morrow before sundown you shall have a talk with the man!”
“I fear you are promising more than you can perform,” doubted the boy.
“I should be a mighty poor eagle if I couldn`t do that much,” said Gorgo.
So when Gorgo and Thumbietot left Alvkarleby they were good friends, and the boy willingly took his mount for a ride on the eagle`s back. Thus he had an opportunity to see much of the country.
When clutched in the eagle`s talons he had seen nothing. Perhaps it was just as well, for in the forenoon he had travelled over Upsala, Osterby`s big factories, the Dannemora Mine, and the ancient castle of Orbyhus, and he would have been sadly disappointed at not seeing them had he known of their proximity.
The eagle bore him speedily over Gastrikland. In the southern part of the province there was very little to tempt the eye. But as they flew northward, it began to be interesting.
“This country is clad in a spruce skirt and a gray-stone jacket,” thought the boy. “But around its waist it wears a girdle which has not its match in value, for it is embroidered with blue lakes and green groves. The great ironworks adorn it like a row of precious stones, and its buckle is a whole city with castles and cathedrals and great clusters of houses.”
When the travellers arrived in the northern forest region, Gorgo alighted on top of a mountain. As the boy dismounted, the eagle said:
“There`s game in this forest, and I can`t forget my late captivity and feel really free until I have gone a-hunting. You won`t mind my leaving you for a while?”
“No, of course, I won`t,” the boy assured him.
“You may go where you like if only you are back here by sundown,” said the eagle, as he flew off.
The boy sat on a stone gazing across the bare, rocky ground and the great forests round about.
He felt rather lonely. But soon he heard singing in the forest below, and saw something bright moving amongst the trees. Presently he saw a blue and yellow banner, and he knew by the songs and the merry chatter that it was being borne at the head of a procession. On it came, up the winding path; he wondered where it and those who followed it were going. He couldn`t believe that anybody would come up to such an ugly, desolate waste as the place where he sat. But the banner was nearing the forest border, and behind it marched many happy people for whom it had led the way. Suddenly there was life and movement all over the mountain plain; after that there was so much for the boy to see that he didn`t have a dull moment.
FOREST DAY
On the mountain`s broad back, where Gorgo left Thumbietot, there had been a forest fire ten years before. Since that time the charred trees had been felled and removed, and the great fire-swept area had begun to deck itself with green along the edges, where it skirted the healthy forest. However, the larger part of the top was still barren and appallingly desolate. Charred stumps, standing sentinel-like between the rock ledges, bore witness that once there had been a fine forest here; but no fresh roots sprang from the ground.
One day in the early summer all the children in the parish had assembled in front of the schoolhouse near the fire-swept mountain. Each child carried either a spade or a hoe on its shoulder, and a basket of food in its hand. As soon as all were assembled, they marched in a long procession toward the forest. The banner came first, with the teachers on either side of it; then followed a couple of foresters and a wagon load of pine shrubs and spruce seeds; then the children.
The procession did not pause in any of the birch groves near the settlements, but marched on deep into the forest. As it moved along, the foxes stuck their heads out of the lairs in astonishment, and wondered what kind of backwoods people these were. As they marched past old coal pits where charcoal kilns were fired every autumn, the cross-beaks twisted their hooked bills, and asked one another what kind of coalers these might be who were now thronging the forest.
Finally, the procession reached the big, burnt mountain plain. The rocks had been stripped of the fine twin-flower creepers that once covered them; they had been robbed of the pretty silver moss and the attractive reindeer moss. Around the dark water gathered in clefts and hollows there was now no wood-sorrel. The little patches of soil in crevices and between stones were without ferns, without star-flowers, without all the green and red and light and soft and soothing things which usually clothe the forest ground.
It was as if a bright light flashed upon the mountain when all the parish children covered it. Here again was …