The geese travelled alongside the coast of the long island, which lay distinctly visible under them.  The boy felt happy and light of heart during the trip.  He was just as pleased and well satisfied as he had been glum and depressed the day before, when he roamed around down on the island, and hunted for the goosey-gander.

He saw now that the interior of the island consisted of a barren high plain, with a wreath of fertile land along the coast; and he began to comprehend the meaning of something which he had heard the other evening.

He had just seated himself to rest a bit by one of the many windmills on the highland, when a couple of shepherds came along with the dogs beside them, and a large herd of sheep in their train.  The boy had not been afraid because he was well concealed under the windmill stairs.  But as it turned out, the shepherds came and seated themselves on the same stairway, and then there was nothing for him to do but to keep perfectly still.

One of the shepherds was young, and looked about as folks do mostly; the other was an old queer one.  His body was large and knotty, but the head was small, and the face had sensitive and delicate features.  It appeared as though the body and head didn’t want to fit together at all.

One moment he sat silent and gazed into the mist, with an unutterably weary expression.  Then he began to talk to his companion.  Then the other one took out some bread and cheese from his knapsack, to eat his evening meal.  He answered scarcely anything, but listened very patiently, just as if he were thinking:  “I might as well give you the pleasure of letting you chatter a while.”

“Now I shall tell you something, Eric,” said the old shepherd.  “I have figured out that in former days, when both human beings and animals were much larger than they are now, that the butterflies, too, must have been uncommonly large.  And once there was a butterfly that was many miles long, and had wings as wide as seas.  Those wings were blue, and shone like silver, and so gorgeous that, when the butterfly was out flying, all the other animals stood still and stared at it.  It had this drawback, however, that it was too large.  The wings had hard work to carry it.  But probably all would have gone very well, if the butterfly had been wise enough to remain on the hillside.  But it wasn’t; it ventured out over the East sea.  And it hadn’t gotten very far before the storm came along and began to tear at its wings.  Well, it’s easy to understand, Eric, how things would go when the East sea storm commenced to wrestle with frail butterfly-wings.  It wasn’t long before they were torn away and scattered; and then, of course, the poor butterfly fell into the sea.  At first it was tossed backward and forward on the billows, and then it was stranded upon a few cliff-foundations outside of Smaland.  And there it lay—­as large and long as it was.