The geese were asleep instantly; but the boy couldn’t get a wink of sleep.  As soon as the sun had disappeared he was seized with a fear of the darkness, and a wilderness-terror, and he longed for human beings.  Where he lay—­tucked in under the goose-wing—­he could see nothing, and only hear a little; and he thought if any harm came to the goosey-gander, he couldn’t save him.

Noises and rustlings were heard from all directions, and he grew so uneasy that he had to creep from under the wing and seat himself on the ground, beside the goose.

Long-sighted Smirre stood on the mountain’s summit and looked down upon the wild geese.  “You may as well give this pursuit up first as last,” he said to himself.  “You can’t climb such a steep mountain; you can’t swim in such a wild torrent; and there isn’t the tiniest strip of land below the mountain which leads to the sleeping-place.  Those geese are too wise for you.  Don’t ever bother yourself again to hunt them!”

But Smirre, like all foxes, had found it hard to give up an undertaking already begun, and so he lay down on the extremest point of the mountain edge, and did not take his eyes off the wild geese.  While he lay and watched them, he thought of all the harm they had done him.  Yes, it was their fault that he had been driven from Skane, and had been obliged to move to poverty-stricken Blekinge.  He worked himself up to such a pitch, as he lay there, that he wished the wild geese were dead, even if he, himself, should not have the satisfaction of eating them.

When Smirre’s resentment had reached this height, he heard rasping in a large pine that grew close to him, and saw a squirrel come down from the tree, hotly pursued by a marten.  Neither of them noticed Smirre; and he sat quietly and watched the chase, which went from tree to tree.  He looked at the squirrel, who moved among the branches as lightly as though he’d been able to fly.  He looked at the marten, who was not as skilled at climbing as the squirrel, but who still ran up and along the branches just as securely as if they had been even paths in the forest.  “If I could only climb half as well as either of them,” thought the fox, “those things down there wouldn’t sleep in peace very long!”

As soon as the squirrel had been captured, and the chase was ended, Smirre walked over to the marten, but stopped two steps away from him, to signify that he did not wish to cheat him of his prey.  He greeted the marten in a very friendly manner, and wished him good luck with his catch.  Smirre chose his words well—­as foxes always do.  The marten, on the contrary, who, with his long and slender body, his fine head, his soft skin, and his light brown neck-piece, looked like a little marvel of beauty—­but in reality was nothing but a crude forest dweller—­hardly answered him.  “It surprises me,” said Smirre, “that such a fine hunter as you are should be satisfied with chasing squirrels when there is much better game within reach.”  Here he paused; but when the marten only grinned impudently at him, he continued:  “Can it be possible that you haven’t seen the wild geese that stand under the mountain wall? or are you not a good enough climber to get down to them?”