And the boy was thinking of it now as he sat on the bench, staring with big eyes at the blackboard, on which the teacher was writing words they were to find out. How nice it must be under the pines now. There flew the raven; brushing the snow off the branches with its black wings, so that it looked like powder as it fell. Where was he going to fly to? His thoughts flew far, far away after the raven, as they had done after the starling. The boy's eyes shone, his chest rose with the deep breath he drew--at that moment the teacher called to him. "Wolfgang, are you asleep with your eyes open? What's this?" The boy gave a start, got red, then pale and knew nothing. The other boys almost died of laughing--"Are you asleep with your eyes open?"--that had been too funny. The teacher did not punish him, but Wolfgang crept home as though he had been punished. He had hidden from the housemaid, who always came to fetch him--no, he would not go with her to-day. He had also run away from his comrades--let them fight without him today, to-morrow he would throw all the more snowballs at them. He walked quite alone, turned off from the street and wandered about aimlessly among the pines. He looked for the raven, but it was far away, and so he began to run too, run as quickly as he could, and tore the knapsack off his back with a loud cry, hurling it far from him up into the broad branches of a pine, so that it hung there and nothing but snow fell down silently in large lumps. That amused him. He filled both his hands with snow, made hard balls of it and began to regularly bombard the pine that kept his knapsack a prisoner. But it did not give it up, and when he had grown hot and red and tired but very much cheered, he had to go home without his knapsack. The housemaid had been back a long time when he arrived. She opened the door for him with a red face--she had run so hard after him--and an angry look. "Hm," she said irritably, "you've been kept, I suppose?" He pushed her aside. "Hold your tongue!" He could not bear her at that moment, when coming in from outside where everything had been so quiet, so free. His parents were already at table. His father frowned as he looked at him, his mother asked in a voice of gentle reproach in which there was also a little anxiety: "Where have you been so long? Lisbeth has been looking for you everywhere." "Well?" His father's voice sounded severe. The boy did not give any answer, it seemed to him all at once as though his tongue were paralysed. What should he tell those people sitting indoors about what he had been doing outside? "He's sure to have been kept at school, ma'am," whispered the housemaid when she handed the meat. "I'll find it out from the other boys to-morrow, and tell you about it, ma'am."