Thereupon she went busily to and fro packing the boy’s knapsack till it was full and, besides, stuffed all kinds of things into his pockets.  Also in Sanna’s little pockets she put all manner of things.  She gave each a piece of bread to eat on the way and in the knapsack, she said, there were two more pieces of wheat bread, in case they should grow too hungry.

“For mother, I have given you some well-roasted coffee,” she said, “and in the little bottle that is stoppered and tightly wrapped up there is also some black coffee, better than mother usually makes over at your house.  Just let her taste it; it is a veritable medicine tonic, so strong that one swallow of it will warm up the stomach, so that the body will not grow cold on the coldest of winter days.  The other things in the pasteboard-box and those that are wrapped up in paper in the knapsack you are to bring home without touching.”

After having talked with the children a little while longer she bade them go.

“Take good care, Sanna,” she said, “that you don’t get chilled, you mustn’t get overheated.  And don’t you run up along the meadows and under the trees.  Probably there will be some wind toward evening, and then you must walk more slowly.  Greet father and mother and wish them a right merry Christmas.”

Grandmother kissed both children on their cheeks and pushed them through the door.  Nevertheless she herself went along, accompanied them through the garden, let them out by the back gate, closed it behind them, and went back into the house.

The children walked past the cakes of ice beside grandfather’s mill, passed through the fields of Millsdorf, and turned upward toward the meadows.

When they were passing along the heights where, as has been said, stood scattered trees and clumps of bushes there fell, quite slowly, some few snow-flakes.

“Do you see, Sanna,” said the boy, “I had thought right away that we would have snow; do you remember, when we left home, how the sun was a bloody red like the lamp hanging at the Holy Sepulchre; and now nothing is to be seen of it any more, and only the gray mist is above the tree-tops.  That always means snow.”

The children walked on more gladly and Sanna was happy whenever she caught a falling flake on the dark sleeves of her coat and the flake stayed there a long time before melting.  When they had finally arrived at the outermost edge of the Millsdorf heights where the road enters the dark pines of the “neck” the solid front of the forest was already prettily sprinkled by the flakes falling ever more thickly.  They now entered the dense forest which extended over the longest part of the journey still ahead of them.