s, and in large irregular patterns. The carpet was very thick and
fine, but he thought it was a pity that it had been so badly used. It
was actually ragged; long tears ran through it; in some places large
pieces were torn away. And the strangest of all was that it appeared to
be spread over a mirror floor; for under the holes and tears in the
carpet shone bright and glittering glass.

The next thing the boy observed was that the sun unrolled itself in the
heavens. Instantly, the mirror-glass under the holes and tears in the
carpet began to shimmer in red and gold. It looked very gorgeous, and
the boy was delighted with the pretty colour-scheme, although he didn't
exactly understand what it was that he saw. But now the crows descended,
and he saw at once that the big carpet under him was the earth, which
was dressed in green and brown cone-trees and naked leaf-trees, and that
the holes and tears were shining fiords and little lakes.

He remembered that the first time he had travelled up in the air, he
had thought that the earth in Skane looked like a piece of checked
cloth. But this country which resembled a torn carpet--what might this
be?

He began to ask himself a lot of questions. Why wasn't he sitting on the
goosey-gander's back? Why did a great swarm of crows fly around him? And
why was he being pulled and knocked hither and thither so that he was
about to break to pieces?

Then, all at once, the whole thing dawned on him. He had been kidnapped
by a couple of crows. The white goosey-gander was still on the shore,
waiting, and to-day the wild geese were going to travel to Oestergoetland.
He was being carried southwest; this he understood because the sun's
disc was behind him. The big forest-carpet which lay beneath him was
surely Smaland.

"What will become of the goosey-gander now, when I cannot look after
him?" thought the boy, and began to call to the crows to take him back
to the wild geese instantly. He wasn't at all uneasy on his own account.
He believed that they were carrying him off simply in a spirit of
mischief.

The crows didn't pay the slightest attention to his exhortations, but
flew on as fast as they could. After a bit, one of them flapped his
wings in a manner which meant: "Look out! Danger!" Soon thereafter they
came down in a spruce forest, pushed their way between prickly branches
to the ground, and put the boy down under a thick spruce, where he was
so well concealed that not even a falco