At Norrköping the wild geese left the plain, and flew up toward Kolmården. For a time they had followed an old, hilly country road, which wound around cliffs, and ran forward under wild mountain-walls—when the boy suddenly let out a shriek. He had been sitting and swinging his foot back and forth, and one of his wooden shoes had slipped off.
"Goosey-gander, goosey-gander, I have dropped my shoe!" cried the boy. The goosey-gander turned about and sank toward the ground; then the boy saw that two children, who were walking along the road, had picked up his shoe. "Goosey-gander, goosey-gander," screamed the boy excitedly, "fly upward again! It is too late. I cannot get my shoe back again."
Down on the road stood Osa, the goose-girl, and her brother, little
Mats, looking at a tiny wooden shoe that had fallen from the skies.
Osa, the goose-girl, stood silent a long while, and pondered over the find. At last she said, slowly and thoughtfully: "Do you remember, little Mats, that when we went past Övid Cloister, we heard that the folks in a farmyard had seen an elf who was dressed in leather breeches, and had wooden shoes on his feet, like any other working man? And do you recollect when we came to Vittskövle, a girl told us that she had seen a Goa-Nisse with wooden shoes, who flew away on the back of a goose? And when we ourselves came home to our cabin, little Mats, we saw a goblin who was dressed in the same way, and who also straddled the back of a goose—and flew away. Maybe it was the same one who rode along on his goose up here in the air and dropped his wooden shoe."
"Yes, it must have been," said little Mats.
They turned the wooden shoe about and examined it carefully—for it isn't every day that one happens across a Goa-Nisse's wooden shoe on the highway.
"Wait, wait, little Mats!" said Osa, the goose-girl. "There is something written on one side of it."
"Why, so there is! but they are such tiny letters."
"Let me see! It says—it says: 'Nils Holgersson from W. Vemminghög.'
That's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard!" said little Mats.