The boy leaped up.
"That's only one of your base fabrications," he cried indignantly.
"You can ask Akka yourself," said Bataki. "I see her coming up there
with her whole flock. And don't forget what I have told you to-day.
There is usually a way out of all difficulties, if only one can find it.
I shall be interested to see what success you have."
VERMLAND AND DALSLAND
Wednesday, October fifth.
To-day the boy took advantage of the rest hour, when Akka was feeding apart from the other wild geese, to ask her if that which Bataki had related was true, and Akka could not deny it. The boy made the leader-goose promise that she would not divulge the secret to Morten Goosey-Gander. The big white gander was so brave and generous that he might do something rash were he to learn of the elf's stipulations.
Later the boy sat on the goose-back, glum and silent, and hung his head.
He heard the wild geese call out to the goslings that now they were in
Dalarne, they could see Städjan in the north, and that now they were
flying over Österdal River to Horrmund Lake and were coming to Vesterdal
River. But the boy did not care even to glance at all this.
"I shall probably travel around with wild geese the rest of my life," he remarked to himself, "and I am likely to see more of this land than I wish."
He was quite as indifferent when the wild geese called out to him that now they had arrived in Vermland and that the stream they were following southward was Klarälven.
"I've seen so many rivers already," thought the boy, "why bother to look at one more?"