It was the most awful day that Smirre Fox had ever experienced.  The wild geese kept on travelling over his head.  They came and went—­came and went.  Great splendid geese who had eaten themselves fat on the German heaths and grain fields, swayed all day through the woods, and so close to him that he touched them many times; yet he was not permitted to appease his hunger with a single one of them.

The winter was hardly gone yet, and Smirre recalled nights and days when he had been forced to tramp around in idleness, with not so much as a hare to hunt, when the rats hid themselves under the frozen earth; and when the chickens were all shut up.  But all the winter’s hunger had not been as hard to endure as this day’s miscalculations.

Smirre was no young fox.  He had had the dogs after him many a time, and had heard the bullets whizz around his ears.  He had lain in hiding, down in the lair, while the dachshunds crept into the crevices and all but found him.  But all the anguish that Smirre Fox had been forced to suffer under this hot chase, was not to be compared with what he suffered every time that he missed one of the wild geese.

In the morning, when the play began, Smirre Fox had looked so stunning that the geese were amazed when they saw him.  Smirre loved display.  His coat was a brilliant red; his breast white; his nose black; and his tail was as bushy as a plume.  But when the evening of this day was come, Smirre’s coat hung in loose folds.  He was bathed in sweat; his eyes were without lustre; his tongue hung far out from his gaping jaws; and froth oozed from his mouth.

In the afternoon Smirre was so exhausted that he grew delirious.  He saw nothing before his eyes but flying geese.  He made leaps for sun-spots which he saw on the ground; and for a poor little butterfly that had come out of his chrysalis too soon.

The wild geese flew and flew, unceasingly.  All day long they continued to torment Smirre.  They were not moved to pity because Smirre was done up, fevered, and out of his head.  They continued without a let-up, although they understood that he hardly saw them, and that he jumped after their shadows.

When Smirre Fox sank down on a pile of dry leaves, weak and powerless and almost ready to give up the ghost, they stopped teasing him.

“Now you know, Mr. Fox, what happens to the one who dares to come near Akka of Kebnekaise!” they shouted in his ear; and with that they left him in peace.

THE WONDERFUL JOURNEY OF NILS

ON THE FARM

Thursday, March twenty-fourth.

Just at that time a thing happened in Skane which created a good deal of discussion and even got into the newspapers but which many believed to be a fable, because they had not been able to explain it.