186 HE HIDES IN A CAVE. 



The roof of the church at Sviirdsjo, in which parish 

 Sven of Isala dwelt, is decorated with two large gilded 

 crowns; one of which was presented by Gustavus himself, 

 and the other, at a subsequent period, by Queen Christina, 

 to mark their sense of the rare fidelity shown to the King 

 by the inhabitants ; who to this day, indeed, are commonly 

 called Krakor, in commemoration of the cutting of the frog 

 of the horse's foot. 



The brothers Mattias and Per, to whose care Gustavus 

 was now entrusted, guarded him most carefully ; but as 

 the Danish emissaries showed themselves even in that wild 

 district, they removed him to a sort of natural cave in the 

 Leksand forest, formed partly by a huge uprooted pine; 

 where he remained for several days, during which they 

 supplied him with food and necessaries. 



But even here he was not considered safe. For his better 

 concealment, therefore, they shifted his hiding-place to a knoll, 

 situated in the middle of an extended morass, where the 

 overhanging branches of an immense fir-tree partially 

 sheltered him from the inclemency of the weather. This 

 eminence was in consequence called Kungs-hogen, or the 

 King's Mound, which name it retains even to the present 

 day. 



At length, Gustavus thought the time was come for him 

 either publicly to call on the people to assist him in restoring 

 freedom to their father-land, or to fly the country ; and as 

 the search after him had now become somewhat less rigor- 

 ous, his faithful friends at Mama's conveyed him through 

 almost boundless forests, to the house of an acquaintance 

 of theirs, who dwelt in the vicinity of Rattvik, a large hamlet 

 on the eastern side of the great lake Siljan. 



