“If you don’t remember,” he said impatiently, “I will never tell you the name of another flower.” The boy went away, his eyes wide with terror at the threat; but after that he did not forget a single name. When he was big enough, they sent him to the Latin school at Wexiö, where the other boys nicknamed him “the little botanist.” His thoughts were outdoors when they should have been in the dry books, and his teachers set him down as a dunce. They did not know that his real study days were when, in vacation, he tramped the thirty miles to his home. Every flower and every tree along the way was an old friend, and he was glad to see them again. Once in a while he found a book that told of plants, and then he was anything but a dunce. But when his father, after Carl had been eight years in the school, asked his teachers what they thought of him, they told him flatly that he might make a good tailor or shoemaker, but a minister—never; he was too stupid. That was a blow, for the parson of Stenbrohult and his wife had set their hearts on making a minister of Carl, and small wonder. His mother was born in the parsonage, and her father and grandfather had been shepherds of the parish all their lives. There were tears in the good minister’s eyes as he told Carl to pack up and get ready to go back home; he had an errand at Dr. Rothman’s, but would return presently. The good doctor saw that his patient was heavy of heart and asked him what was wrong. When he heard what Carl’s teachers had said, he flashed out: “What! he not amount to anything? There is not one in the whole lot who will go as far as he. A minister he won’t be, that I’ll allow, but I shall make a doctor of him such as none of them ever saw. You leave him here with me.” And the parson did, comforted in spite of himself. But Carl’s mother could not get over it. It was that garden, she declared, and when his younger brother as much as squinted that way, she flew at him with a “You dare to touch it!” and shook him. When Dr. Rothman thought his pupil ready for the university, he sent him up to Lund, and the head-master of the Latin School gave him the letter he must bring, to be admitted. “Boys at school,” he wrote in it, “may be likened to young trees in orchard nurseries, where it sometimes happens that here and there among the saplings there are some that make little growth, or even appear as wild seedlings, giving no promise; but when afterwards transplanted to the orchard, make a start, branch out freely, and at last yield satisfactory fruit.” By good luck, though, Carl ran across an old teacher from Wexiö, one of the few who had believed in him and was glad to see him. He took him to the Rector and introduced him with warm words of commendation, and also found him lodgings under the roof of Dr. Kilian Stobæus.