were brides in long
veils, and gentlemen in fine clothes; and there were children with waved
hair and pretty white dresses. And he thought that they all stared
blindly into vacancy--and did not want to see.

"Poor you!" said the boy to the portraits. "Your mother is dead. You
cannot make reparation now, because you went away from her. But my
mother is living!"

Here he paused, and nodded and smiled to himself. "My mother is living,"
said he. "Both father and mother are living."

FROM TABERG TO HUSKVARNA

_Friday, April fifteenth_.

The boy sat awake nearly all night, but toward morning he fell asleep
and then he dreamed of his father and mother. He could hardly recognise
them. They had both grown gray, and had old and wrinkled faces. He asked
how this had come about, and they answered that they had aged so because
they had longed for him. He was both touched and astonished, for he had
never believed but what they were glad to be rid of him.

When the boy awoke the morning was come, with fine, clear weather.
First, he himself ate a bit of bread which he found in the cabin; then
he gave morning feed to both geese and cow, and opened the cowhouse door
so that the cow could go over to the nearest farm. When the cow came
along all by herself the neighbours would no doubt understand that
something was wrong with her mistress. They would hurry over to the
desolate farm to see how the old woman was getting along, and then they
would find her dead body and bury it.

The boy and the geese had barely raised themselves into the air, when
they caught a glimpse of a high mountain, with almost perpendicular
walls, and an abrupt, broken-off top; and they understood that this
must be Taberg. On the summit stood Akka, with Yksi and Kaksi, Kolmi and
Neljae, Viisi and Knusi, and all six goslings and waited for them. There
was a rejoicing, and a cackling, and a fluttering, and a calling which
no one can describe, when they saw that the goosey-gander and Dunfin had
succeeded in finding Thumbietot.

The woods grew pretty high up on Taberg's sides, but her highest peak
was barren; and from there one could look out in all directions. If one
gazed toward the east, or south, or west, then there was hardly anything
to be seen but a poor highland with dark spruce-trees, brown morasses,
ice-clad lakes, and bluish mountain-ridges. The boy couldn't keep from
thinking it was true that the one who had created this hadn't taken very
great