“I think it must be near six o’clock,” he said. “The sky is clear, and I can see the big star. We can start in another hour.”
I felt so much refreshed that I was for setting out immediately; but Lars remarked, very sensibly, that it was not yet possible to find the road. While we were talking, Axel neighed.
“There they are!” cried Lars, and immediately began to put on his boots, his scarf and heavy coat. I did the same, and by the time we were ready we heard shouts and the crack of whips. We harnessed Axel to the sled, and proceeded slowly in the direction of the sounds, which came, as we presently saw, from a company of farmers, out thus early to plough the road. They had six pairs of horses geared to a wooden frame, something like the bow of a ship, pointed in front and spreading out to a breadth of ten or twelve feet. The machine not only cut through the drifts but packed the snow, leaving a good, solid road behind it. After it had passed, we sped along merrily in the cold morning twilight and in little more than an hour reached the post-house at Umea, where we found Lars’s father prepared to return home. He waited, nevertheless, until Lars had eaten a good warm breakfast, when I said good-bye to both, and went on towards Lapland.
Some weeks afterwards, on my return to Stockholm, I stopped at the same little station. This time the weather was mild and bright, and the father would have gone with me to the next post-house; but I preferred to take my little bed-fellow and sled-fellow. He was so quiet and cheerful and fearless that, although I had been nearly all over the world, and he had never been away from home,—although I was a man and he a young boy,—I felt that I had learned a lesson from him, and might probably learn many more, if I should know him better. We had a merry trip of two or three hours, and then I took leave of Lars forever. He is no doubt still driving travellers over the road, a handsome, courageous, honest-hearted young man, perhaps with his own son growing up to take his place, and help some later stranger like myself through a winter storm.
A good many years ago I spent a winter in Africa. I had intended to go up the Nile only as far as Nubia, visiting the great temples and tombs of Thebes on the way; but when I had done all this, and passed beyond the cataracts at the southern boundary of Egypt, I found the journey so agreeable, so full of interest, and attended with so much less danger than I had supposed, that I determined to go on for a month or two longer, and penetrate as far as possible into the interior. Everything was favorable to my plan. I crossed the great Nubian Desert without accident or adventure, reached the ancient region of Ethiopia, and continued my journey until I had advanced beyond all the cataracts of the Nile, to the point where the two great branches of the river flow together.