and
take from it a silver spoon.

From the deerskin bag the child next took a small box made of bone, and
by this time Birger and all the others were watching her with interest.
Off came the cover of the box. Out of the box came a tiny package wrapped
carefully in a bit of woolen cloth, and out of the wrappings came a
precious treasure.

"Look," exclaimed Gerda when she saw what it was; "it is a perfect little
reindeer!"

And so, indeed, it was,--a tiny animal made from a bit of bone, with
hoofs, head and antlers all perfectly carved.

The child held it out toward Gerda, nodding her head shyly to show that
she wished to have her take it. But Gerda hesitated to do so until Erik
said, "My father will make her another. You gave her the string of
shells, and she will not like it if you refuse her gift."

So Gerda took the little reindeer, and many a time in Stockholm, the next
winter, she looked at it and thought of the child who gave it to her, and
of the curious day she spent with the Lapps in far away Lapland.

CHAPTER IX

KAREN'S BROTHER

"How would you like to spend a whole summer here in the forest, watching
the reindeer?" Lieutenant Ekman asked Gerda, after the milking was over
and the Lapp mother had gone back to the tent with her children.

"Not very well, if I had to live in that tent," Gerda answered. Then
suddenly something attracted her attention, and she held up her hand,
saying, "Listen!"

A faint call sounded in the distance,--a call for help.

"This way," cried Erik, and dashed off down a path which led toward the
river.

All the others followed him. "It must be one of the lumbermen," said
Erik's father. "They often get hurt in the log jams."

He was right. When they reached the riverbank they found several men
trying to drive some logs out into the current, so as to release a man
who had slipped and was pinned against a rock.

The bed of the river was rilled with rocks, over which the water was
rushing with great force, in just such a torrent as may be found on
nearly all the rivers of northern Sweden. Starting from the melting snow
on the mountains, these rivers flow rapidly down to the sea, and every
summer millions of logs go sailing down the streams to the sawmills along
the eastern coast.

Thousands of these logs are thrown into the water to drift down to the
sea by themselves; but on some of the slower rivers the logs are made
up into rafts which are guided down the stream