66 Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, 



not I cannot say, but in less than half a minute after she sprang up 

 behind the chair, dragged off the old gentleman's thatch, and 

 triumphantly brought it to me, amid roars of laughter from all the 

 company, save the old gentleman, who clapped his hands to his 

 head, wondering what the deuce was up. On another occasion, in 

 the same house we had a little music, and a celebrated violin player, 

 whose fiddle was a real old Cremona of a fabulous date, electrified 

 las with his fiddle. He laid his old fiddle on the piano, and 

 walked to the other end of the room to talk to a friend. Two 

 little boys were larking with Sutt, and one or other of them 

 managed to pull the cover off the piano, and the old Cremona fell. 

 Judge my dismay, as well as that of the whole room, when Sutt 

 sprang forward, seized the old fiddle by the handle, and brought it 

 up to me, as proud as a peacock. I jumped up, and took it out of 

 her mouth as tenderly as I could, and put it into the old professor's 

 hands, who stood tlie very picture of misery and dismay. There 

 was no laughing on this occasion. No one spoke a word, for if the 

 old fiddle had been destroyed, I really think the good old owner 

 would have scarcely deemed life worth living for. He never said a 

 word, but walked out of the room with the fiddle under his arm. 

 As soon as he got into the passage we could hear him run through 

 the gamut in all directions, backwards and forwards. I never did 

 hear such extraordinary music in my life. But in five minutes he 

 returned with a smile on his good-humoured old face to tell us it 

 was all right, and patting Sutt on the head, told her in Swedish 

 that she had frightened him more than he had ever been frightened 

 in his life. I would not have had that old fiddle injured by my dog 

 for a hundred pounds. 



I said that we were in the habit of dropping a floating trimmer 

 here and there in the open places among these bulrushes, and now 

 I want Mr. Francis to read this. 



At the back of the island I have mentioned above is an open 

 place in the bulrushes considerably deeper than the water in any 

 other part of the swamp 3 it is probably between four and five hun- 

 dred yards long, and less than one hundred broad, and has all the 



