3 6 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



thermometer, for he was a boy then only six years 

 older than our Carl ; but the temperature on the following 

 morning really stood at 13-14 (Celsius^), making the 

 fire in the white stove in the coffee-room of the inn 

 very acceptable as, after stirring its embers with a brass 

 trident, father and son sat down to breakfast off fish and 

 eggs and a basketful of three shades of brown rye and 

 barley bread, and the pretty maiden who waited on them 

 brought some fine white bread besides as a special 

 welcoming. ' Tak, tak,' say they both the Swedish for 

 ' Thank you.' Since Charles XII. 5 s wars carried off the 

 men women have always been waiters in Swedish inns. 

 The sun coming out makes it warm, but not yet 

 oppressive, as they walk to the school by way of the 

 sparkling blue lake. It seems higher water than last 

 night, as if there were a tide in it. But feeling rises 

 above the line of noticing such things as the moment of 

 parting draws near. It comes, the embrace is over, the 

 blessing left behind, and all the love that can be con- 

 centrated in one last yearning look, and the parent, with 

 chill at his heart, foreboding on his mind, and a prayer at 

 his lips, rides home through the pine woods, still tragic 

 with their traces of snow-havoc. A young forest tree 

 had been uprooted and hastily put in to fill a gap in 

 the splinter hedge. Pastor Nils Linnaeus looks at it 

 painfully and then turns quickly away. How glorious 

 were these forest aisles when solid with the crystals of 

 winter, and when his boy played in them and lit all 

 nature up for him with the gladness of his rosy face : 



