First the boy entered a farm yard as large as a city marketplace and enclosed by a long row of red houses.  As he crossed the yard, he saw another farm where the dwelling-house faced a gravel path and a wide lawn.  Back of the house there was a garden thick with foliage.  The dwelling itself was small and humble, but the garden was edged by a row of exceedingly tall mountain-ash trees, so close together that they formed a real wall around it.  It appeared to the boy as if he were coming into a great, high-vaulted chamber, with the lovely blue sky for a ceiling.  The mountain-ash were thick with clusters of red berries, the grass plots were still green, of course, but that night there was a full moon, and as the bright moonlight fell upon the grass it looked as white as silver.

No human being was in sight and the boy could wander freely wherever he wished.  When he was in the garden he saw something which almost put him in good humour.  He had climbed a mountain-ash to eat berries, but before he could reach a cluster he caught sight of a barberry bush, which was also full of berries.  He slid along the ash branch and clambered up into the barberry bush, but he was no sooner there than he discovered a currant bush, on which still hung long red clusters.  Next he saw that the garden was full of gooseberries and raspberries and dog-rose bushes; that there were cabbages and turnips in the vegetable beds and berries on every bush, seeds on the herbs and grain-filled ears on every blade.  And there on the path—­no, of course he could not mistake it—­was a big red apple which shone in the moonlight.

The boy sat down at the side of the path, with the big red apple in front of him, and began cutting little pieces from it with his sheath knife.

“It wouldn’t be such a serious matter to be an elf all one’s life if it were always as easy to get good food as it is here,” he thought.

He sat and mused as he ate, wondering finally if it would not be as well for him to remain here and let the wild geese travel south without him.

“I don’t know for the life of me how I can ever explain to Morten Goosey-Gander that I cannot go home,” thought he.  “It would be better were I to leave him altogether.  I could gather provisions enough for the winter, as well as the squirrels do, and if I were to live in a dark corner of the stable or the cow shed, I shouldn’t freeze to death.”

Just as he was thinking this, he heard a light rustle over his head, and a second later something which resembled a birch stump stood on the ground beside him.

The stump twisted and turned, and two bright dots on top of it glowed like coals of fire.  It looked like some enchantment.  However, the boy soon remarked that the stump had a hooked beak and big feather wreaths around its glowing eyes.  Then he knew that this was no enchantment.

“It is a real pleasure to meet a living creature,” remarked the boy.  “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me the name of this place, Mrs. Brown Owl, and what sort of folk live here.”