The only place on the heath where the heather is not all-powerful, is a
low, stony ridge which passes over it. There you'll find juniper bushes,
mountain ash, and a few large, fine oaks. At the time when Nils
Holgersson travelled around with the wild geese, a little cabin stood
there, with a bit of cleared ground around it. But the people who had
lived there at one time, had, for some reason or other, moved away. The
little cabin was empty, and the ground lay unused.
When the tenants left the cabin they closed the damper, fastened the
window-hooks, and locked the door. But no one had thought of the broken
window-pane which was only stuffed with a rag. After the showers of a
couple of summers, the rag had moulded and shrunk, and, finally, a crow
had succeeded in poking it out.
The ridge on the heather-heath was really not as desolate as one might
think, for it was inhabited by a large crow-folk. Naturally, the crows
did not live there all the year round. They moved to foreign lands in
the winter; in the autumn they travelled from one grain-field to another
all over Goetaland, and picked grain; during the summer, they spread
themselves over the farms in Sonnerbo township, and lived upon eggs and
berries and birdlings; but every spring, when nesting time came, they
came back to the heather-heath.
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