and I will go away and never come
back." And go he did, to his castle, with half a dozen of his
nearest friends.

They sat and looked at one another when he was gone, and then
priests and nobles fell to arguing among themselves, all talking at
once. The plain people, the burghers and the peasants, listened
awhile, but when they got no farther, let them know that if they
couldn't settle it, they, the people, would, and in a way that would
give them little joy. The upshot of it all was that messengers were
sent to bring the King back. He made them go three times, and when
he came at last, it was as absolute master. In the ordering of the
kingdom that was made there, he became the head of the church as
well as of the state. Gustav's pen was as sharp as his tongue. When
Hans Brask, the oldest prelate in the land, who had stood stoutly by
the old regime, left the country and refused to come back, he wrote
to him: "As long as you might milk and shear your sheep, you staid
by them. When God spake and said you were to feed them, not to shear
and slaughter them, you ran away. Every honest man can judge if you
have done well." Hard words to a good old man; but there were plenty
of others who deserved them. That was the end of the hierarchy in
Sweden.

But not of the unruly peasants who had tasted the joys of
king-making. How kindly they took to the Reformation at the outset
one can judge from the demand of some of them that the King should
"burn or otherwise kill such as ate meat on Friday." They rose
again and again, and would listen only to the argument of force.
When the Luebeckers pressed hard for the payment of old debts, and
the treasury was empty as usual, King Gustav hit upon a new kind of
revenue. He demanded of every church in the land that it give up its
biggest bell to the funds. It was the last straw. The Dalecarlians
rose against what they deemed sacrilege, under the leadership of
Mans Nilsson and Anders Persson of Rankhyttan, the very men who had
befriended Gustav in his need, and the insurrection spread. The "War
of the Bells" was settled with the sword, and the peasants gave in.
But Gustav came of a stock that "never forgot." Two years later,
when his hands were free at home, he suddenly invaded Dalecarlia
with a powerful army, determined to "pull those weeds up by the
roots." He summoned the peasants to Thing, made a ring around them
of armed men, and gave them their choice:

"Submit now for good and all,"