The sorrowful feelings which at this cruel time weighed upon the heart of the young hero may be imagined. One thought alone stood out clear in his mind—Sweden must be delivered from the most barbarous tyranny. He took the road to Dalecarlia, leaving Stockholm and Upsala on the right; and, keeping clear of Hedemora and Falum, the principal towns of the province, he plunged into this Scandinavin Switzerland, a region bristling with mountains and forming in every age an asylum for refugees. He was determined to conceal himself for some time behind its torrents, its waterfalls, its lakes, its forests, and precipitous rocks. To secure his _incognito_, he put on the dress of a peasant of the country. The handsome young noble wore a coat of coarse woollen cloth; underneath it a long jacket and leather breeches; a sort of leather petticoat which reached to the knee, stockings as large in the lower part as in the upper, and shoes with very high heels and square toes. About the end of November he went to the Kupferberg; offered himself for a workman, and lived there wielding the axe and the spade, and supporting himself on his pitiful wages. He did not shut his eyes to the dangers which threatened him. He knew that in consequence of his escape from the prison in which Christian had immured him, he was more obnoxious to the king than the other nobles. True, an amnesty had been granted to him; but the sole object of this was doubtless to entice him to Stockholm, that he might be sacrificed there like his kinsmen and his peers. The massacre begun in the capital was continued in the provinces. One might have said that the proscriptions of Sylla were renewed. The abbot and five monks of the convent of Nidala had been drowned, by command of Christian, without any form of trial. At Jonköping Lindorm Ribbing had been executed. He had two sons, one nine years old, the other six. The elder boy was hung by his long and beautiful hair, and his head was then severed from the body by a sabre-stroke, and his clothes were covered with his blood. It was then the turn of the younger. The little boy of six said to the executioner, in his childish voice—‘Please do not soil my dress as you have done my brother’s, for mamma would be very much vexed.’ At the sound of these innocent words, the executioner flung his sword away, exclaiming—‘I will never cut off his head.’ But another headsman was ordered to the spot, who decapitated the poor child, and, by command of his superiors, laid his head at the feet of the man who had refused to put him to death. These barbarities which fell on innocent creatures show plainly the dangers which beset the energetic and dreaded Gustavus.[395]