The procession marched with gladness and gayety, and he did not wonder at that when he saw who was leading it.  It was nothing less than the Sun itself that rolled on like a great shining head with hair of many-hued rays and a countenance beaming with merriment and kindliness!

“Forward, march!” it kept calling out.  “None need feel anxious whilst I am here.  Forward, march!”

“I wonder where the Sun wants to take us to?” remarked the boy.  A rye blade that walked beside him heard him, and immediately answered: 

“He wants to take us up to Lapland to fight the Ice Witch.”

Presently the boy noticed that some of the travellers hesitated, slowed up, and finally stood quite still.  He saw that the tall beech tree stopped, and that the roebuck and the wheat blade tarried by the wayside, likewise the blackberry bush, the little yellow buttercup, the chestnut tree, and the grouse.

He glanced about him and tried to reason out why so many stopped.  Then he discovered that they were no longer in southern Sweden.  The march had been so rapid that they were already in Svealand.

Up there the oak began to move more cautiously.  It paused awhile to consider, took a few faltering steps, then came to a standstill.

“Why doesn’t the oak come along?” asked the boy.

“It’s afraid of the Ice Witch,” said a fair young birch that tripped along so boldly and cheerfully that it was a joy to watch it.  The crowd hurried on as before.  In a short time they were in Norrland, and now it mattered not how much the Sun cried and coaxed—­the apple tree stopped, the cherry tree stopped, the rye blade stopped!

The boy turned to them and asked: 

“Why don’t you come along?  Why do you desert the Sun?”

“We dare not!  We’re afraid of the Ice Witch, who lives in Lapland,” they answered.

The boy comprehended that they were far north, as the procession grew thinner and thinner.  The rye blade, the barley, the wild strawberry, the blueberry bush, the pea stalk, the currant bush had come along as far as this.  The elk and the domestic cow had been walking side by side, but now they stopped.  The Sun no doubt would have been almost deserted if new followers had not happened along.  Osier bushes and a lot of brushy vegetation joined the procession.  Laps and reindeer, mountain owl and mountain fox and willow grouse followed.

Then the boy heard something coming toward them.  He saw great rivers and creeks sweeping along with terrible force.

“Why are they in such a hurry?” he asked.

“They are running away from the Ice Witch, who lives up in the mountains.”

All of a sudden the boy saw before him a high, dark, turreted wall.  Instantly the Sun turned its beaming face toward this wall and flooded it with light.  Then it became apparent that it was no wall, but the most glorious mountains, which loomed up—­one behind another.  Their peaks were rose-coloured in the sunlight, their slopes azure and gold-tinted.