It was the castle of Drottningholm—the most beautiful memory of his childhood, even including the fairy-tale books.

Their things are unpacked in a little white house on a hill, and now the children roll on the grass, on real green grass without dandelions, like that in the Clara churchyard. It is so high and bright, and the woods and fiords are green and blue in the distance.

The dust-bin is forgotten, the schoolroom with its foul atmosphere has disappeared, the melancholy church-bells sound no more, and the graves are far away. But in the evening a bell rings in a little belfry quite near at hand. With astonishment he sees the modest little bell which swings in the open air, and sends its sound far over the park and bay. He thinks of the terrible deep-toned bell in the tower at home, which seemed to him like a great black maw when he looked into it, as it swung, from below. In the evening, when he is tired and has been washed and put to bed, he hears how the silence seems to hum in his ears, and waits in vain to hear the strokes and chiming of the bell in the tower.

The next morning he wakes to get up and play. He plays day after day for a whole week. He is in nobody's way, and everything is so peaceful. The little ones sleep in the nursery, and he is in the open air all day long. His father does not appear; but on Saturday he comes out from the town and pinches the boys' cheeks because they have grown and become sunburnt. "He does not beat us now any more," thinks the child; but he does not trace this to the simple fact that here outside the city there is more room and the air is purer.

The slimmer passes gloriously, as enchanting as a fairy-tale; through the poplar avenues run lackeys in silver-embroidered livery, on the water float sky-blue dragon-ships with real princes and princesses, on the roads roll golden chaises and purple-red coaches drawn by Arab horses four-in-hand, and the whips are as long as the reins.

Then there is the King's castle with the polished floors, the gilt furniture, marble-tiled stoves and pictures; the park with its avenues like long lofty green churches, the fountains ornamented with unintelligible figures from story-books; the summer-theatre that remained a puzzle to the child, but was used as a maze; the Gothic tower, always closed and mysterious, which had nothing else to do but to echo back the sound of voices.

He is taken for a walk in the park by a cousin whom he calls "aunt." She is a well-dressed maiden just grown up, and carries a parasol. They come into a gloomy wood of sombre pines; here they wander for a while, ever farther. Presently they hear a murmur of voices, music, and the clatter of plates and forks; they find themselves before a little castle; figures of dragons and snakes wind down from the roof-ridge, other figures of old men with yellow oval faces, black slanting eyes and pigtails, look from under them; letters which he cannot read, and which are unlike any others he has seen, run along the eaves. But below on the ground-floor of the castle royal personages sit at table by the open windows and eat from silver dishes and drink wine.