



Produced by David Schaal and PG Distributed Proofreaders




[Transcriber's note: The inconsistent orthography of the original is
retained in this etext.]


THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES of NILS

by

SELMA LAGERLOeF


TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH
BY VELMA SWANSTON HOWARD



CONTENTS

The Boy

Akka from Kebnekaise

The Wonderful Journey of Nils

Glimminge Castle

The Great Crane Dance on Kullaberg

In Rainy Weather

The Stairway with the Three Steps

By Ronneby River

Karlskrona

The Trip to Oeland

Oeland's Southern Point

The Big Butterfly

Little Karl's Island

Two Cities

The Legend of Smaland

The Crows

The Old Peasant Woman

From Taberg to Huskvarna

The Big Bird Lake

Ulvasa-Lady

The Homespun Cloth

The Story of Karr and Grayskin

The Wind Witch

The Breaking Up of the Ice

Thumbietot and the Bears

The Flood

Dunfin

Stockholm

Gorgo the Eagle

On Over Gaestrikland

A Day in Haelsingland

In Medelpad

A Morning in Angermanland

Westbottom and Lapland

Osa, the Goose Girl, and Little Mats

With the Laplanders

Homeward Bound

Legends from Haerjedalen

Vermland and Dalsland

The Treasure on the Island

The Journey to Vemminghoeg

Home at Last

The Parting with the Wild Geese


_Some of the purely geographical matter in the Swedish original of the
"Further Adventures of Nils" has been eliminated from the English
version.

The author has rendered valuable assistance in cutting certain chapters
and abridging others. Also, with the author's approval, cuts have been
made where the descriptive matter was merely of local interest.

But the story itself is intact.

V.S.H_.



THE BOY


THE ELF

_Sunday, March twentieth_.

Once there was a boy. He was--let us say--something like fourteen years
old; long and loose-jointed and towheaded. He wasn't good for much, that
boy. His chief delight was to eat and sleep; and after that--he liked
best to make mischief.

It was a Sunday morning and the boy's parents were getting ready to go
to church. The boy sat on the edge of the table, in his shirt sleeves,
and thought how lucky it was that both father and mother were going
away, and the coast would be clear for a couple of hours. "Good! Now I
can take down pop's gun and fire off a shot, without anybody's meddling
interference," he said to himself.

But it was almost as if father should have guessed the boy's thoughts,
for just as he was on the threshold--ready to start--he stopped short,
and turned toward the boy. "Since you won't come to church with mother
and me," he said, "the least you can do, is to read the service at home.
Will you promise to do so?" "Yes," said the boy, "that I can do easy
enough." And he thought, of course, that he wouldn't read any more than
he felt like reading.

The boy thought that never had he seen his mother so persistent. In a
second she was over by the shelf near the fireplace, and took down
Luther's Commentary and laid it on the table, in front of the
window--opened at the service for the day. She also opened the New
Testament, and placed it beside the Commentary. Finally, she drew up the
big arm-chair, which was bought at the parish auction the year before,
and which, as a rule, no one but father was permitted to occupy.

The boy sat thinking that his mother was giving herself altogether too
much trouble with this spread; for he had no intention of reading more
than a page or so. But now, for the second time, it was almost as if his
father were able to see right through him. He walked up to the boy, and
said in a severe tone: "Now, remember, that you are to read carefully!
For when we come back, I shall question you thoroughly; and if you have
skipped a single page, it will not go well with you."

"The service is fourteen and a half pages long," said his mother, just
as if she wanted to heap up the measure of his misfortune. "You'll have
to sit down and begin the reading at once, if you expect to get through
with it."

With that they departed. And as the boy stood in the doorway watching
them, he thought that he had been caught in a trap. "There they go
congratulating themselves, I suppose, in the belief that they've hit
upon something so good that I'll be forced to sit and hang over the
sermon the whole time that they are away," thought he.

But his father and mother were certainly not congratulating themselves
upon anything of the sort; but, on the contrary, they were very much
distressed. They were poor farmers, and their place was not much bigger
than a garden-plot. When they first moved there, the place couldn't feed