It was well he did it, for half-way to the next town some prowling soldiers overtook them, and just to make sure that there was nothing in the straw, prodded the load with their spears.  Nothing stirred, and they went on their way.  But a spear had gashed Gustav’s leg, and presently blood began to drip in the snow.  Sven had his wits about him.  He got down, and cut the fetlock of one of the beasts with his jack-knife so that it bled and no one need ask questions.  When they got to Marnaes, Gustav was weak from the loss of blood, but a friendly surgeon was found to bind up his wounds.

Farther and farther north he fled, keeping to the deep woods in the day, until he reached Raettwik.  Feeling safer there, he spoke to the people coming from church one Sunday and implored them to shake off the Danish yoke.  But they only shook their heads.  He was a stranger among them, and they would talk it over with their neighbors.  Not yet were his wanderings over.  To Mora he went next, where Parson Jakob hid him in a lonely farm-house.  Evil chance led the spies direct to his hiding-place, and once more it was the housewife whose quick wit saved him.  Dame Margit was brewing the Yule beer when she saw them coming.  In a trice she had Gustav in the cellar and rolled the brewing vat over the trap-door.  Then they might search as they saw fit; there was nothing there.  The first blood was spilled for Gustav Vasa while he was at Mora, and it was a Dane who did it.  He was the kind that liked to see fair play; when an under-sheriff came looking for the hunted man there, the Dane waylaid and killed him.

Christmas morning, when Master Jakob had preached his sermon in the church, Gustav spoke to the congregation out in the snow-covered churchyard.  A gravestone was his pulpit.  Eloquent always, his sorrows and wrongs and the memory of the hard months lent wings to his words.  His speech lives yet in Dalecarlia, for now he was among its mountains.

“It is good to see this great meeting,” he said, “but when I think of our fatherland I am filled with grief.  At what peril I am here with you, you know who see me hounded as a wild beast day by day, hour by hour.  But our beloved country is more to me than life.  How long must we be thralls, we who were born to freedom?  Those of you who are old remember what persecution Swedish men and women have suffered from the Danish kings.  The young have heard the story of it and have learned from they were little children to hate and resist such rule.  These tyrants have laid waste our land and sucked its marrow, until nothing remains for us but empty houses and lean fields.  Our very lives are not safe.”  He called upon them to rise and drive the invaders out.  If they wanted a leader, he was ready.

His words stirred the mountaineers deeply.  Cries of anger were heard in the crowd; it was not the first time they had taken up arms in the cause of freedom.  But when they talked it over, the older heads prevailed; there had not been time enough to hear both sides.  They told him that they would not desert the King; he must expect nothing of them.