“To Borg to offer myself, to Borg to offer myself,” answers Cousin Christopher. “Do not go to Borg, do not go to Borg! An unmarried man has no sorrow,” screams the thrush after him. But he does not listen to the warning. Up the hills and down the hills he rides, until at last he is there. He leaps from the saddle and is shown in to the countess. Everything goes well. The countess is gracious to him. Cousin Christopher feels sure that she will not refuse to bear his glorious name or to reign in his palace. He sits and puts off the moment of rapture, when he shall show her the royal letter. He enjoys the waiting. She talks and entertains him with a thousand stories. He laughs at everything, enjoys everything. But as they are sitting in one of the rooms where Countess Elizabeth has hung up Mamselle Marie’s curtains, the countess begins to tell the story of them. And she makes it as funny as she can. “See,” she says at last, “see how bad I am. Here hang the curtains now, that I may think daily and hourly of my sin. It is a penance without equal. Oh, those dreadful knitted curtains!” The great warrior, Cousin Christopher, looks at her with burning eyes. “I, too, am old and poor,” he says, “and I have sat for ten years by the fire and longed for my mistress. Do you laugh at that too, countess?” “Oh, that is another matter,” cries the countess. “God has taken from me happiness and my fatherland, and forced me to eat the bread of others,” says Cousin Christopher, earnestly. “I have learned to have respect for poverty.” “You, too,” cries the countess, and holds up her hands. “How virtuous every one is getting!” “Yes,” he says, “and know, countess, that if God some day in the future should give me back riches and power, I would make a better use of them than to share them with such a worldly woman, such a painted, heartless monkey, who makes fun of poverty.” “You would do quite right, Cousin Christopher.” And then Cousin Christopher marches out of the room and rides home to Ekeby again; but the spirits do not follow him, the thrush does not call to him, and he no longer sees the smiling spring. He came to Ekeby just as the Easter witch was to be burned. She is a big doll of straw, with a rag face, on which eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn with charcoal. She is dressed in old cast-off clothes. The long-handled oven-rake and broom are placed beside her, and she has a horn of oil hung round her neck. She is quite ready for the journey to hell. Major Fuchs loads his gun and shoots it off into the air time after time. A pile of dried branches is lighted, the witch is thrown on it and is soon burning gayly. The pensioners do all they can, according to the old, tried customs, to destroy the power of the evil one.