From a Swedish Homestead

by Selma Lagerlöf

'Then I suppose I must try to get some for you, my girl,' said old Ingmar, for he was in a real Christmas humour.

He went out of the room, stepped over the girl who was scouring the floor, and remained standing on the doorstep, to see if there were anyone about whom he could send to the birch-wood for some withes. The farm hands were still busy cutting Yule logs; his son came out of the barn with the Christmas sheaf; his two sons-in-law were putting the carts into the shed so that the yard could be tidy for the Christmas festival. None of them had time to leave their work.

The old man then quietly made up his mind to go himself. He went across the yard as if he were going into the cowshed, looked cautiously round to make sure no one noticed him, and stole along outside the barn where there was a fairly good road to the wood. The old man thought it was better not to let anyone know where he was going, for either his son or his sons-in-law might then have begged him to remain at home, and old people like to have their own way.

He went down the road, across the fields, through the small pine-forest into the birch-wood. Here he left the road, and waded in the snow to find some young birches.

About the same time the wind at last accomplished what it had been busy with the whole day: it tore the snow from the clouds, and now came rushing through the wood with a long train of snow after it.

Ingmar Ingmarson had just stooped down and cut off a birch twig, when the wind came tearing along laden with snow. Just as the old man was getting up the wind blew a whole heap of snow in his face. His eyes were full of snow, and the wind whirled so violently around him that he was obliged to turn round once or twice.

The whole misfortune, no doubt, arose from Ingmar Ingmarson being so old. In his young days a snowstorm would certainly not have made him dizzy. But now everything danced round him as if he had joined in a Christmas polka, and when he wanted to go home he went in the wrong direction. He went straight into the large pine-forest behind the birch-wood instead of going towards the fields.

It soon grew dark, and the storm continued to howl and whirl around him amongst the young trees on the outskirts of the forest. The old man saw quite well that he was walking amongst fir-trees, but he did not understand that this was wrong, for there were also fir-trees on the other side of the birch-wood nearest the farm. But by-and-by he got so far into the forest that everything was quiet and still—one could not feel the storm, and the trees were high with thick stems—then he found out that he had mistaken the road, and would turn back.

He became excited and upset at the thought that he could lose his way, and as he stood there in the midst of the pathless wood he was not sufficiently clear-headed to know in which direction to turn. He first went to the one side and then to the other. At last it occurred to him to retrace his way in his own footprints, but darkness came on, and he could no longer follow them. The trees around him grew higher and higher. Whichever way he went, it was evident to him that he got further and further into the forest.