Thursday, June sixteenth.  
The following day the boy travelled over Hälsingland. It spread beneath him with new, pale-green shoots on the pine trees, new birch leaves in the , new green grass in the meadows, and grain in the fields. It was a mountainous country, but directly through it ran a broad, light valley from either side of which branched other valleys—some short and narrow, some broad and long.
 
"This land resembles a leaf," thought the boy, "for it's as green as a leaf, and the valleys it in about the same way as the of a leaf are foliated."
 
The branch valleys, like the main one, were filled with lakes, rivers, farms, and villages. They snuggled, light and smiling, between the dark mountains until they were gradually squeezed together by the hills. There they were so narrow that they could not hold more than a little .
 
On the high land between the valleys there were pine forests which had no even ground to grow upon. There were mountains all about, and the forest covered the whole, like a woolly hide stretched over a bony body.
 
It was a country to look down upon, and the boy saw a good deal of it, because the eagle was trying to find the old fiddler, Larsson, and flew from ravine to ravine looking for him.
 
A little later in the morning there was life and movement on every farm. The doors of the cattle sheds were thrown wide open and the cows were let out. They were coloured, small, and , and so sure-footed that they made the most comic leaps and bounds. After them came the and sheep, and it was plainly to be seen that they, too, were in the best of spirits.
 
It grew livelier every moment in the farm yards. A couple of young girls with knapsacks on their backs walked among the cattle; a boy with a long switch kept the sheep together, and a little dog ran in and out among the cows, barking at the ones that tried to him. The farmer a horse to a cart loaded with tubs of butter, boxes of cheese, and all kinds of eatables. The people laughed and . They and the beasts were alike merry—as if looking forward to a day of real pleasure.
 
A moment later all were on their way to the forest. One of the girls walked in the lead and the cattle with pretty, musical calls. The animals followed in a long line. The shepherd boy and the sheep-dog ran hither and , to see that no creature turned from th............