With this, the lid flew open, and one could
see that there were a few spring flowers in it.
The botanist's box dropped just in front of the boy; and he must have
thought that here was his opportunity to get into the castle and find
out what had become of the goosey-gander. He smuggled himself quickly
into the box and concealed himself as well as he could under the
anemones and colt's-foot.
He was hardly hidden before the young man picked the box up, hung it
around his neck, and slammed down the cover.
Then the teacher came back, and said that they had been given
permission to enter the castle. At first he conducted them no farther
than the courtyard. There he stopped and began to talk to them about
this ancient structure.
He called their attention to the first human beings who had inhabited
this country, and who had been obliged to live in mountain-grottoes and
earth-caves; in the dens of wild beasts, and in the brushwood; and that
a very long period had elapsed before they learned to build themselves
huts from the trunks of trees. And afterward how long had they not been
forced to labour and struggle, before they had advanced from the log
cabin, with its single room, to the building of a castle with a hundred
rooms--like Vittskoevle!
It was about three hundred and fifty years ago that the rich and
powerful built such castles for themselves, he said.
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