orse on the
track again, and afterwards right the sleigh. Then we found that the
harness was broken in several places, and we had to mend it the best way
we could with numb fingers. I had stopped laughing, for there was no fun
in that.

"At this rate of travelling," I said to the driver, "it will take a
whole day to go three or four miles. I do not know whether our poor
horse will be able to stand it. Look at him! He looks as if he were a
smoke-stack, so much steam is rising from his body. He may become so
exhausted that he will not be able to go further, and we shall have to
abandon the sleigh."

"It is so," coolly replied Lars the driver, and he remained silent
afterwards.

I felt sorry for the poor horse, and reproached myself for not having
tarried at the last post station.

Then I said to Lars, "If the horse gives out, we will try to build a
snow house for us three. You have some hay, and he will not starve. As
for ourselves, we will try to reach some farm and get some food and some
oats for our poor dear horse. I am very sorry we have no skees with us."

There was so much snow over the land that I thought I had come to "Snow
Land." It was over twelve feet in depth; it had been snowing for six
consecutive days and nights, and it was snowing yet. I was now between
the sixty-third and sixty-fourth degrees of north latitude, and I had to
travel on the road nearly two hundred miles more before I came to the
southern part of "The Land of the Long Night." The little town of Umea
for which I was bound was still far away. I said to myself, "I have to
cross this 'Snow Land' before I reach 'The Land of the Long Night.' What
hard work it will be!"

A little further on we came to the post station--and how glad I was to
spend the night there--to get into a feather bed. The following day the
snow-ploughs and the rollers were busy, and the centre of the highway
was made passable for some miles further north. So bidding good-bye to
the station master and to my driver of the day before, I started with a
fine young horse and a strong young fellow for a driver.

As I looked around, I could see snow, snow, deep snow everywhere. The
fences, the stone walls of the scattered farms, and the huge boulders
with which that part of the country is covered were buried out of sight;
only the tops of the birches and of the fir and pine trees could be
seen. I had not met such deep snow before! I had never encountered such
a continuous sno