But not yet for many weary months did the people hear its summons.  Swedish manhood was at its lowest ebb.  Stockholm was held by the widow of Sten Sture with a half-famished garrison.  In Kalmar another woman, Anna Bjelke, commanded, but her men murmured, and the fall of the fortress was imminent.  When Gustav Vasa, who had slipped in unseen, exhorted them to stand fast, they would have mobbed him.  He left as he had come, the day before the surrender.  Travelling by night, he made his way inland, finding everywhere fear and distrust.  The King had promised that if they would obey him “they should never want for herring and salt,” so they told Gustav, and when he tried to put heart into them and rouse their patriotism, they took up bows and arrows and bade him be gone.  Indeed, there were not wanting those who shot at him.  Like a hunted deer he fled from hamlet to hamlet.  Such friends as he had left advised him to throw himself upon the King’s mercy; told him of the amnesty proclaimed.  But Gustav’s thoughts dwelt grimly among the Northern mountaineers whom as a boy he had bragged he would set against the tyrant.  Insensibly he shaped his course toward their country.

He was with his brother-in-law, Joachim Brahe, when the King’s message bidding him to the coronation came.  Gustav begged him not to go, but Brahe’s wife and children were within Christian’s reach, and he did not dare stay away.  When he left, the fugitive hid in his ancestral home at Raefsnaes on lake Maelar.  There one of Brahe’s men brought him news of the massacre in which his master and Gustav’s father had perished.  His mother, grandmother, and sisters were dragged away to perish in Danish dungeons.  On Gustav’s head the King had set a price, and spies were even then on his track.

Gustav’s mind was made up.  What was there now to wait for?  Clad as a peasant, he started for Dalecarlia with a single servant to keep him company, but before he reached the mines the man stole all his money and ran away.  He had to work now to live, and hired out to Anders Persson, the farmer of Rankhyttan.  He had not been there many days when one of the women saw an embroidered sleeve stick out under his coat and told her master that the new hand was not what he pretended to be.  The farmer called him aside, and Gustav told him frankly who he was.  Anders Persson kept his secret, but advised him not to stay long in any one place lest his enemies get wind of him.  He slipped away as soon as it was dark, nearly lost his life by breaking through the ice, but reached Ornaes on the other side of Lake Runn, half dead with cold and exposure.  He knew that another Persson who had been with him in the war lived there, and found his house.  Arendt Persson was a rascal.  He received him kindly, but when he slept harnessed his horse and went to Mans Nilsson, a neighbor, with the news:  the King’s reward would make them both rich, if he would help him seize the outlawed man.