Christmas with Selma Lagerlöf. Selma Lagerlöf
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never heard of such folly! "What power can that old Helpless have?"
As Karr walked along, his mind full of these thoughts, he happened to see the game-keeper, who stood pointing up at a tree.
"What are you looking at?" asked a man who stood beside him.
"Sickness has come among the caterpillars," observed the game-keeper.
Karr was astonished, but he was even more angered at the snake's having the power to keep his word. Grayskin would have to stay away a long long time, for, of course, that water-snake would never die.
At the very height of his grief a thought came to Karr which comforted him a little.
"Perhaps the water-snake won't live so long, after all!" he thought. "Surely he cannot always lie protected under a tree root. As soon as he has cleaned out the caterpillars, I know some one who is going to bite his head off!"
It was true that an illness had made its appearance among the caterpillars. The first summer it did not spread much. It had only just broken out when it was time for the larvae to turn into pupae. From the latter came millions of moths. They flew around in the trees like a blinding snowstorm, and laid countless numbers of eggs. An even greater destruction was prophesied for the following year.
The destruction came not only to the forest, but also to the caterpillars. The sickness spread quickly from forest to forest. The sick caterpillars stopped eating, crawled up to the branches of the trees, and died there.
There was great rejoicing among the people when they saw them die, but there was even greater rejoicing among the forest animals.
From day to day the dog Karr went about with savage glee, thinking of the hour when he might venture to kill Helpless.
But the caterpillars, meanwhile, had spread over miles of pine woods. Not in one summer did the disease reach them all. Many lived to become pupas and moths.
Grayskin sent messages to his friend Karr by the birds of passage, to say that he was alive and faring well. But the birds told Karr confidentially that on several occasions Grayskin had been pursued by poachers, and that only with the greatest difficulty had he escaped.
Karr lived in a state of continual grief, yearning, and anxiety. Yet he had to wait two whole summers more before there was an end of the caterpillars!
Karr no sooner heard the game-keeper say that the forest was out of danger than he started on a hunt for Helpless. But when he was in the thick of the forest he made a frightful discovery: He could not hunt any more, he could not run, he could not track his enemy, and he could not see at all!
During the long years of waiting, old age had overtaken Karr. He had grown old without having noticed it. He had not the strength even to kill a water-snake. He was not able to save his friend Grayskin from his enemy.
RETRIBUTION
One afternoon Akka from Kebnekaise and her flock alighted on the shore of a forest lake.
Spring was backward—as it always is in the mountain districts. Ice covered all the lake save a narrow strip next the land. The geese at once plunged into the water to bathe and hunt for food. In the morning Nils Holgersson had dropped one of his wooden shoes, so he went down by the elms and birches that grew along the shore, to look for something to bind around his foot.
The boy walked quite a distance before he found anything that he could use. He glanced about nervously, for he did not fancy being in the forest.
"Give me the plains and the lakes!" he thought. "There you can see what you are likely to meet. Now, if this were a grove of little birches, it would be well enough, for then the ground would be almost bare; but how people can like these wild, pathless forests is incomprehensible to me. If I owned this land I would chop down every tree."
At last he caught sight of a piece of birch bark, and just as he was fitting it to his foot he heard a rustle behind him. He turned quickly. A snake darted from the brush straight toward him!
The snake was uncommonly long and thick, but the boy soon saw that it had a white spot on each cheek.
"Why, it's only a water-snake," he laughed; "it can't harm me."
But the next instant the snake gave him a powerful blow on the chest that knocked him down. The boy was on his feet in a second and running away, but the snake was after him! The ground was stony and scrubby; the boy could not proceed very fast; and the snake was close at his heels.
Then the boy saw a big rock in front of him, and began to scale it.
"I do hope the snake can't follow me here!" he thought, but he had no sooner reached the top of the rock than he saw that the snake was following him.
Quite close to the boy, on a narrow ledge at the top of the rock, lay a round stone as large as a man's head. As the snake came closer, the boy ran behind the stone, and gave it a push. It rolled right down on the snake, drawing it along to the ground, where it landed on its head.
"That stone did its work well!" thought the boy with a sigh of relief, as he saw the snake squirm a little, and then lie perfectly still.
"I don't think I've been in greater peril on the whole journey," he said.
He had hardly recovered from the shock when he heard a rustle above him, and saw a bird circling through the air to light on the ground right beside the snake. The bird was like a crow in size and form, but was dressed in a pretty coat of shiny black feathers.
The boy cautiously retreated into a crevice of the rock. His adventure in being kidnapped by crows was still fresh in his memory, and he did not care to show himself when there was no need of it.
The bird strode back and forth beside the snake's body, and turned it over with his beak. Finally he spread his wings and began to shriek in ear-splitting tones:
"It is certainly Helpless, the water-snake, that lies dead here!" Once more he walked the length of the snake; then he stood in a deep study, and scratched his neck with his foot.
"It isn't possible that there can be two such big snakes in the forest," he pondered. "It must surely be Helpless!"
He was just going to thrust his beak into the snake, but suddenly checked himself.
"You mustn't be a numbskull, Bataki!" he remarked to himself. "Surely you cannot be thinking of eating the snake until you have called Karr! He wouldn't believe that Helpless was dead unless he could see it with his own eyes."
The boy tried to keep quiet, but the bird was so ludicrously solemn, as he stalked back and forth chattering to himself, that he had to laugh.
The bird heard him, and, with a flap of his wings, he was up on the rock. The boy rose quickly and walked toward him.
"Are you not the one who is called Bataki, the raven? and are you not a friend of Akka from Kebnekaise?" asked the boy.
The bird regarded him intently; then nodded three times.
"Surely, you're not the little chap who flies around with the wild geese, and whom they call Thumbietot?"
"Oh, you're not so far out of the way," said the boy.
"What luck that I should have run across you! Perhaps you can tell me who killed this water-snake?"
"The stone which I rolled down on him killed him," replied the boy, and related how the whole thing happened.
"That was cleverly done for one who is as tiny as you are!" said the raven. "I have a friend in these parts who will be glad to know that this snake has been killed, and I should like to render you a service in return."
"Then tell me why you are glad the water-snake is dead," responded the boy.
"It's a long story," said the raven; "you wouldn't have the patience to listen to it."