"Very well, I will soon untie your chain. Mother is still asleep. Come along, Gerda. Now, I am going to put this little girl on your back, and you are to carry her safely to the Snow Queen's palace. She must find her little playfellow." And the robber-girl lifted Gerda up and tied her on the reindeer's back, having first put a little cushion beneath her. "I must keep your muff, Gerda, but you can have mother's big, black mittens. Come, put your hands in. Oh, they do look ugly." "I am going to Kay, little Kay," and Gerda cried for joy. "There is nothing to whimper about," said the robber-girl. "Look! here are two loaves and a ham." Then she opened wide the door, loosened the reindeer's chain, and said, "Now run." And the reindeer darted through the open door, Gerda waving her blackmittened hands, and the little robber-girl calling after the reindeer, "Take care of my little girl." On and on they sped, over briers and bushes, through fields and forests and swamps. The wolves howled and the ravens screamed. But Gerda was happy. She was going to Kay. * * * The loaves and the ham were finished, and Gerda and the reindeer were in Lapland. They stopped in front of a little hut. Its roof sloped down almost to the ground, and the door was so low that to get into the hut one had to creep on hands and knees. How the reindeer squeezed through I cannot tell, but there he was in the little hut, telling an old Lapp woman who was frying fish over a lamp, first his own story and then the sad story of Gerda and little Kay. "Oh, you poor creatures," said the Lapp woman, "the Snow Queen is not in Lapland at present. She is hundreds of miles away at her palace in Finland. But I will give you a note to a Finn woman, and she will direct you better than I can." And the Lapp woman wrote a letter on a dried fish, as she had no paper. Then, when Gerda had warmed herself by the lamp, the Lapp woman tied her on to the reindeer again, and they squeezed through the little door and were once more out in the wide world. On and on they sped through the long night, while the blue northern lights flickered in the sky overhead, and the crisp snow crackled beneath their feet. At last they reached Finland and knocked on the Finn woman's chimney, for she had no door at all. Then they squeezed down the chimney and found themselves in a very hot little room. The old woman at once loosened Gerda's things, and took off her mittens and boots. Then she put ice on the reindeer's head. Now that her visitors were more comfortable she could look at the letter they brought. She read it three times and then put it in the fish-pot, for this old woman never wasted anything. There was silence for five minutes, and then the reindeer again told his story first, and afterward the sad story of Gerda and little Kay.