“Good day to you!” said the boy.  “I have heard that there’s a sick horse in here.  Surely it can’t be you, who look so healthy and strong.”

The horse turned his head and stared fixedly at the boy.

“Are you the son?” he queried.  “I have heard many bad reports of him.  But you have such a good face, I couldn’t believe that you were he, did I not know that he was transformed into an elf.”

“I know that I left a bad name behind me when I went away from the farm,” admitted Nils Holgersson.  “My own mother thinks I am a thief.  But what matters it—­I sha’n’t tarry here long.  Meanwhile, I want to know what ails you.”

“Pity you’re not going to stay,” said the horse, “for I have the feeling that you and I might become good friends.  I’ve got something in my foot—­the point of a knife, or something sharp—­that’s all that ails me.  It has gone so far in that the doctor can’t find it, but it cuts so that I can’t walk.  If you would only tell your father what’s wrong with me, I’m sure that he could help me.  I should like to be of some use.  I really feel ashamed to stand here and feed without doing any work.”

“It’s well that you have no real illness,” remarked Nils Holgersson.  “I must attend to this at once, so that you will be all right again.  You don’t mind if I do a little scratching on your hoof with my knife, do you?”

Nils Holgersson had just finished, when he heard the sound of voices.  He opened the stable door a little and peeped out.

His father and mother were coming down the lane.  It was easy to see that they were broken by many sorrows.  His mother had many lines on her face and his father’s hair had turned gray.  She was talking with him about getting a loan from her brother-in-law.

“No, I don’t want to borrow any more money,” his father said, as they were passing the stable.  “There’s nothing quite so hard as being in debt.  It would be better to sell the cabin.”

“If it were not for the boy, I shouldn’t mind selling it,” his mother demurred.  “But what will become of him, if he returns some day, wretched and poor—­as he’s likely to be—­and we not here?”

“You’re right about that,” the father agreed.  “But we shall have to ask the folks who take the place to receive him kindly and to let him know that he’s welcome back to us.  We sha’n’t say a harsh word to him, no matter what he may be, shall we mother?”

“No, indeed!  If I only had him again, so that I could be certain he is not starving and freezing on the highways, I’d ask nothing more!”

Then his father and mother went in, and the boy heard no more of their conversation.

He was happy and deeply moved when he knew that they loved him so dearly, although they believed he had gone astray.  He longed to rush into their arms.

“But perhaps it would be an even greater sorrow were they to see me as I now am.”

While he stood there, hesitating, a cart drove up to the gate.  The boy smothered a cry of surprise, for who should step from the cart and go into the house yard but Osa, the goose girl, and her father!