path up Kranheia,--she's slowing down a
little.

Impossible for me to hold Karsten any longer. I had to let go. He was
off like an arrow, his hair standing up straight and his feet pounding
the ground like a young elephant's.

O pshaw! Running like that he would soon catch Olaug. It was frightfully
exciting, like a horse-race or a hunt after wild animals.

Well, that isn't a very good comparison, for nothing could be less like
a wild animal than Olaug; but it was awfully exciting to see whether she
would keep ahead and get the Chili stamp from Nils Peter.

So that I might see better how the race ended I sprang up to our
chicken-yard, or rather beyond it, on our own hill. You could see the
whole path up over Kranheia better from there than from any other place.
But just where I must be to see best was that awfully high board fence,
too high for me to see over, that went from the chicken-yard quite a
long way beyond on the hill.

Pooh! What of it? I just wiggled a board that was already loose, pulled
it away and stuck my head in the opening. It was a little narrow but I
got my head through. Oh--oh! Karsten had caught up to Olaug and run past
her like an ostrich at full speed--I've always heard that an ostrich
runs faster than anything else in the world--yes, there he was swinging
in towards Nils Peter's house.

O pshaw! Now that Chili stamp was lost for ever and ever.

Olaug had plumped herself right down; she had to sit still and get her
breath, poor thing!

Now that there was nothing more for me to watch, I started to draw my
head back out of the narrow opening between the thick boards. But, O
horrors! It stuck fast! I couldn't possibly get it back. I turned and
twisted my head this way and that, and up and down; I tried to pull and
squeeze it back, but no, that was utterly impossible. How in the world I
had ever got my head through the opening in the first place I can't
understand to this day, but that I had got it through was only too sure.

New struggles to get loose--I thought I should tear my ears
off--Goodness gracious, what should I do!

At first I wasn't a speck afraid. I just wriggled and pulled as hard as
I could. But when I realized that I simply could not free myself, a sort
of terror came over me.

Just think--if I never got my head out? Or suppose there came a cross
dog and bit me while my head was as if nailed fast in the fence! And
suppose nobody found me--(for of course nobody would know t