There were now only two towns which continued to hold out against the Danes, Stockholm and Calmar. The former was blockaded by sea and land, and Gustavus could not enter it; but Calmar being blockaded only by sea, he succeeded in making his way to a tongue of land near the walls, and entered the town on the last day of May, 1520. He found the whole town sunk into a state of despondency, and the only reply given to his generous words was a threat of taking his life. The Danish admiral, Norby, having summoned the place to surrender, Gustavus was desirous at all hazards of preserving his independence for the service of his country, and he therefore threw himself into the mountainous district of Smaland. Here he found an asylum among his father’s peasants; but here also the people were losing their courage and were ready to bow their heads under the yoke. It was in vain that Gustavus appeared among them at their gatherings. ‘Consider,’ he said to them, ‘what a _feast_ Christian is preparing for you!’ ‘Pooh!’ they replied, ‘the king will not let us want either herrings or salt.’ This was enough for them. Others, angry with the young hero who wanted to disturb them in their peaceful solitudes, even snatched up their arrows and darts and cast them at him. His spiritless countrymen went further than this, and set a price on his head. This people, for want of energy, seemed prepared to submit to any disgrace, and carried despondency and the love of bondage to the pitch of fanaticism. The alarm caused by the Danes was universal; a panic terror had taken possession of all minds. Gustavus alone, inspired with intrepid courage, and with a manly and invincible patriotism, did not despair of raising the dead to life and of winning the victory. He quitted in disguise the district in which his liberty and even his life were continually in danger, and following the byways in order to elude his pursuers, he withdrew to the upper mountain solitudes, and in these he wandered about all the summer. He lived on roots and wild fruit; the meanest food sufficed him. But even this soon failed him; he hungered, and could not tell how to provide for his wants. Driven to extremities, and in total destitution, he betook himself without money, almost without clothes, to the estate of Tarna, in Sudermania, to the house of his brother-in-law, Joachim Brahe. For some months no one had known where he was; and his sister especially had been in a state of cruel anxiety. One fine day she saw him coming; she immediately welcomed and treated him affectionately and with all attention, and thus restored his exhausted powers. His brother-in-law was setting out to attend the coronation of Christian, to which he had been invited; Gustavus entreated him not to go, and declared that for his own part, instead of going to pay court to the Danes, his only thought was to drive them out of Sweden. ‘If I do not go in response to