“Gruel, Mummie dear,” said the two of them as with one mouth. “What was that gruel made in?” questioned the mother. “In the coffeepot, Mummie dear,” they answered as if they were speaking a piece. They said it so nicely and they were so little and naïve, that the mother had to laugh in spite of herself. VI THE NECKAN IN THE southern part of the parish there are tracts where the landscape is more variform and far more beautiful than up north, round Mårbacka. There the Fryken cuts into the land in deep bays--the one after the other--along each of which lie shore-meadows, bordered by leafy woods, and three or four fine old peasant homesteads. Jutting out between the bays are rocky, wood-grown headlands so wild and inhospitable that no one would think of clearing or building there. One summer’s day Lisa Maja Wennervik had ridden down to Bössviken, which is the most southerly bay, to order some of the fine pears ripening there under the protecting hills. The Bössvik folk were very friendly, and she had dropped in at several cottages, so that it was rather late when she left for home. But the girl was not afraid to ride back alone in the light summer evening. She went slowly, that she might enjoy to the full the beauty of the night; now riding up among the hills through dense woods, where she fancied robbers or bears might spring out at any moment and tear her off her horse; and now down dales of dewy fields, pretty birch groves and light, shimmering streams. There was still a pale rosy glow in the sky, which was reflected in the lake. She had never seen anything lovelier than that night! All at once she saw a large, beautiful stallion grazing in the shore-meadow of a bay. His coat was a dapple gray, his mane so long it swept the ground, and his tail, which was thick as a rye-sheaf, also reached to the ground. The horse was broad across the hindquarters and high at the withers; he had a small head, with fine, clear eyes, his legs were slender, his hoofs a silvery white that glistened like polished metal as he lifted them in the grass. His body bore no marks of harness or saddle. Lisa Maja had just walked her horse, Svarten, down a hillside, and was now going at the same slow pace toward the meadow where the stallion grazed. She went so close to him there was but the fence between them; by putting out her hand she could have stroked his haunches. The stallion seemed not to have noticed them before; but now he raised his head and looked up at the young girl. And Lisa Maja was so pretty that the young swains would drop axe, or scythe, or whatever they had in hand, when she came riding, and hurry down to the roadside to hang over the fence till she had gone by. Fancy! When the beautiful stallion raised his eyes to her, there was the same look of admiration in his gaze that the peasant lads sent her from the roadside.