dren played ring games, and
sang as they played. The Salvation Army was out. He saw a lot of people
dressed in black and red--sitting upon a wooded hill, playing on guitars
and brass instruments. On one road came a great crowd of people. They
were Good Templars who had been on a pleasure trip. He recognized them
by the big banners with the gold inscriptions which waved above them.
They sang song after song as long as he could hear them.

After that the boy could never think of Gottland without thinking of the
games and songs at the same time.

He had been sitting and looking down for a long while; but now he
happened to raise his eyes. No one can describe his amazement. Before he
was aware of it, the wild geese had left the interior of the island and
gone westward--toward the sea-coast. Now the wide, blue sea lay before
him. However, it was not the sea that was remarkable, but a city which
appeared on the sea-shore.

The boy came from the east, and the sun had just begun to go down in the
west. When he came nearer the city, its walls and towers and high,
gabled houses and churches stood there, perfectly black, against the
light evening sky. He couldn't see therefore what it really looked like,
and for a couple of moments he believed that this city was just as
beautiful as the one he had seen on Easter night.

When he got right up to it, he saw that it was both like and unlike that
city from the bottom of the sea. There was the same contrast between
them, as there is between a man whom one sees arrayed in purple and
jewels one day, and on another day one sees him dressed in rags.

Yes, this city had probably, once upon a time, been like the one which
he sat and thought about. This one, also, was enclosed by a wall with
towers and gates. But the towers in this city, which had been allowed to
remain on land, were roofless, hollow and empty. The gates were without
doors; sentinels and warriors had disappeared. All the glittering
splendour was gone. There was nothing left but the naked, gray stone
skeleton.

When the boy came farther into the city, he saw that the larger part of
it was made up of small, low houses; but here and there were still a few
high gabled houses and a few cathedrals, which were from the olden time.
The walls of the gabled houses were whitewashed, and entirely without
ornamentation; but because the boy had so lately seen the buried city,
he seemed to understand how they had been decorated: some w