“What do the reindeer live on in the winter when the snow covers the moss?” questioned Birger.

“The Lapps have to find places where the snow is not more than four or five feet deep, and then the animals can dig holes in the snow with their forefeet until they reach the moss,” replied his father.  “The reindeer are never housed and seem to like cold weather.  They prefer to dig up the moss for themselves, and will not eat it after it has been gathered and dried.”

Just then the Lapp mother came to speak to her husband, and in a few minutes all the rest of the family arrived.

“They are going to milk the reindeer,” Erik explained to Gerda.

“How often do you milk them?” she asked.

“Twice a week,” was the answer.  “They give only a little milk, but it is very thick and rich.”

Erik and his brother Pers went carefully into the herd and threw a lasso gently over the horns of the deer, to hold them still while the mother did the milking.  The twins looked on with interest; but to their great astonishment not one of the reindeer gave more than a mug of milk.  They had been used to seeing brimming pails of cow’s milk at the Ekman farm in Dalarne.

“How do they ever get enough cream to make butter?” questioned Gerda.

“We never make butter, but we make good cheese,” Erik’s mother explained, as she brought a cup of milk for them to taste.

“What do these people eat?” Gerda asked her father, when the woman went back to her milking.

“The reindeer furnish them with milk, cream, cheese and meat; and when they sell an animal they buy coffee, sugar, meal, tobacco, and whatever else they need.  Then they catch a few fish and kill a bear once in a great while.”

“I have killed two bears in my life,” Erik’s father said with pride.  “Look,” and he showed his belt, from which hung a fringe of bears’ teeth.

“Do all the Lapps know how to speak Swedish?” Birger questioned.

“And do they all know how to read and write?” added Gerda.

Lieutenant Ekman nodded.  “Most of them do,” he replied.  “Our government provides teachers and ministers for the largest settlements, so that the Laplanders may become good Swedish subjects.”

“My brother and I went to school in Jockmock last winter,” said Erik, who had overheard the conversation.  “It is a Lapp village near Gellivare, and my father goes there sometimes to sell toys that we carve from the antlers of the reindeer.”

A little five-year-old girl, who had hardly taken her eyes from Gerda’s face, suddenly put up her hand and took off a leather pouch which hung around her neck.  Opening the pouch, she took from it a tiny bag made of deerskin.

Gerda had noticed that each one of the family wore just such a pouch, and she had seen the mother open hers, when she was making the coffee, and take from it a silver spoon.

From the deerskin bag the child next took a small box made of bone, and by this time Birger and all the others were watching her with interest.  Off came the cover of the box.  Out of the box came a tiny package wrapped carefully in a bit of woolen cloth, and out of the wrappings came a precious treasure.