This time he had no need to wait for an answer.  The marten rushed up to him with back bent, and every separate hair on end.  “Have you seen wild geese?” he hissed.  “Where are they?  Tell me instantly, or I’ll bite your neck off!” “No! you must remember that I’m twice your size—­so be a little polite.  I ask nothing better than to show you the wild geese.”

The next instant the marten was on his way down the steep; and while Smirre sat and watched how he swung his snake-like body from branch to branch, he thought:  “That pretty tree-hunter has the wickedest heart in all the forest.  I believe that the wild geese will have me to thank for a bloody awakening.”

But just as Smirre was waiting to hear the geese’s death-rattle, he saw the marten tumble from branch to branch—­and plump into the river so the water splashed high.  Soon thereafter, wings beat loudly and strongly and all the geese went up in a hurried flight.

Smirre intended to hurry after the geese, but he was so curious to know how they had been saved, that he sat there until the marten came clambering up.  That poor thing was soaked in mud, and stopped every now and then to rub his head with his forepaws.  “Now wasn’t that just what I thought—­that you were a booby, and would go and tumble into the river?” said Smirre, contemptuously.

“I haven’t acted boobyishly.  You don’t need to scold me,” said the marten.  “I sat—­all ready—­on one of the lowest branches and thought how I should manage to tear a whole lot of geese to pieces, when a little creature, no bigger than a squirrel, jumped up and threw a stone at my head with such force, that I fell into the water; and before I had time to pick myself up—­”

The marten didn’t have to say any more.  He had no audience.  Smirre was already a long way off in pursuit of the wild geese.

In the meantime Akka had flown southward in search of a new sleeping-place.  There was still a little daylight; and, beside, the half-moon stood high in the heavens, so that she could see a little.  Luckily, she was well acquainted in these parts, because it had happened more than once that she had been wind-driven to Blekinge when she travelled over the East sea in the spring.

She followed the river as long as she saw it winding through the moon-lit landscape like a black, shining snake.  In this way she came way down to Djupafors—­where the river first hides itself in an underground channel—­and then clear and transparent, as though it were made of glass, rushes down in a narrow cleft, and breaks into bits against its bottom in glittering drops and flying foam.  Below the white falls lay a few stones, between which the water rushed away in a wild torrent cataract.  Here mother Akka alighted.  This was another good sleeping-place—­especially this late in the evening, when no human beings moved about.  At sunset the geese would hardly have been able to camp there, for Djupafors does not lie in any wilderness.  On one side of the falls is a paper factory; on the other—­which is steep, and tree-grown—­is Djupadal’s park, where people are always strolling about on the steep and slippery paths to enjoy the wild stream’s rushing movement down in the ravine.