At dinner time all the wild geese came running and asked him if he had seen anything of the white goosey-gander.  “No, he has not been with me,” said the boy.  “We had him with us all along until just lately,” said Akka, “but now we no longer know where he’s to be found.”

The boy jumped up, and was terribly frightened.  He asked if any fox or eagle had put in an appearance, or if any human being had been seen in the neighbourhood.  But no one had noticed anything dangerous.  The goosey-gander had probably lost his way in the mist.

But it was just as great a misfortune for the boy, in whatever way the white one had been lost, and he started off immediately to hunt for him.  The mist shielded him, so that he could run wherever he wished without being seen, but it also prevented him from seeing.  He ran southward along the shore—­all the way down to the lighthouse and the mist cannon on the island’s extreme point.  It was the same bird confusion everywhere, but no goosey-gander.  He ventured over to Ottenby estate, and he searched every one of the old, hollow oaks in Ottenby grove, but he saw no trace of the goosey-gander.

He searched until it began to grow dark.  Then he had to turn back again to the eastern shore.  He walked with heavy steps, and was fearfully blue.  He didn’t know what would become of him if he couldn’t find the goosey-gander.  There was no one whom he could spare less.

But when he wandered over the sheep meadow, what was that big, white thing that came toward him in the mist if it wasn’t the goosey-gander?  He was all right, and very glad that, at last, he had been able to find his way back to the others.  The mist had made him so dizzy, he said, that he had wandered around on the big meadow all day long.  The boy threw his arms around his neck, for very joy, and begged him to take care of himself, and not wander away from the others.  And he promised, positively, that he never would do this again.  No, never again.

But the next morning, when the boy went down to the beach and hunted for mussels, the geese came running and asked if he had seen the goosey-gander.  No, of course he hadn’t.  “Well, then the goosey-gander was lost again.  He had gone astray in the mist, just as he had done the day before.”

The boy ran off in great terror and began to search.  He found one place where the Ottenby wall was so tumble-down that he could climb over it.  Later, he went about, first on the shore which gradually widened and became so large that there was room for fields and meadows and farms—­then up on the flat highland, which lay in the middle of the island, and where there were no buildings except windmills, and where the turf was so thin that the white cement shone under it.

Meanwhile, he could not find the goosey-gander; and as it drew on toward evening, and the boy must return to the beach, he couldn’t believe anything but that his travelling companion was lost.  He was so depressed, he did not know what to do with himself.