He was hardly hidden before the young man picked the box up, hung it around his neck, and slammed down the cover.

Then the teacher came back, and said that they had been given permission to enter the castle.  At first he conducted them no farther than the courtyard.  There he stopped and began to talk to them about this ancient structure.

He called their attention to the first human beings who had inhabited this country, and who had been obliged to live in mountain-grottoes and earth-caves; in the dens of wild beasts, and in the brushwood; and that a very long period had elapsed before they learned to build themselves huts from the trunks of trees.  And afterward how long had they not been forced to labour and struggle, before they had advanced from the log cabin, with its single room, to the building of a castle with a hundred rooms—­like Vittskoevle!

It was about three hundred and fifty years ago that the rich and powerful built such castles for themselves, he said.  It was very evident that Vittskoevle had been erected at a time when wars and robbers made it unsafe in Skane.  All around the castle was a deep trench filled with water; and across this there had been a bridge in bygone days that could be hoisted up.  Over the gate-arch there is, even to this day, a watch-tower; and all along the sides of the castle ran sentry-galleries, and in the corners stood towers with walls a metre thick.  Yet the castle had not been erected in the most savage war time; for Jens Brahe, who built it, had also studied to make of it a beautiful and decorative ornament.  If they could see the big, solid stone structure at Glimminge, which had been built only a generation earlier, they would readily see that Jans Holgersen Ulfstand, the builder, hadn’t figured upon anything else—­only to build big and strong and secure, without bestowing a thought upon making it beautiful and comfortable.  If they visited such castles as Marsvinsholm, Snogeholm and Oevid’s Cloister—­which were erected a hundred years or so later—­they would find that the times had become less warlike.  The gentlemen who built these places, had not furnished them with fortifications; but had only taken pains to provide themselves with great, splendid dwelling houses.

The teacher talked at length—­and in detail; and the boy who lay shut up in the box was pretty impatient; but he must have lain very still, for the owner of the box hadn’t the least suspicion that he was carrying him along.

Finally the company went into the castle.  But if the boy had hoped for a chance to crawl out of that box, he was deceived; for the student carried it upon him all the while, and the boy was obliged to accompany him through all the rooms.  It was a tedious tramp.  The teacher stopped every other minute to explain and instruct.