their own home."

"Perhaps you will be disappointed," Birger told her. "Erik says that his
father's reindeer may wander away any day to find a place where there is
more moss, and if they do, the whole family will follow them."

"Where do they go?" asked Gerda.

"There is a treaty between Norway and Sweden, more than one hundred and
fifty years old, which provides that Swedish Lapps can go to the coast of
Norway in summer, and Norwegian Lapps can go inland to Sweden in winter,"
Lieutenant Ekman told the children.

"Yes," said Erik, "when the moss is scanty or the swarms of mosquitoes
too thick, the reindeer hurry off to some pleasanter spot, without
stopping to ask permission. Perhaps we have been in camp a week, perhaps
a month, just as it happens; but when we hear their joints snapping and
their hoofs tramping all together, we know it is time to take down the
tent, pack up everything and follow the herd to a new pasture."

"I am glad we are out of sight of the photograph shops in Gellivare,
anyway," Birger told Erik, when they were seated in the light carts and
were once more on their journey. "If I could take such good pictures
myself, I shouldn't care; but all my pictures of the midnight sun make it
look like the moon in a snow-bank."

Just then Gerda, who was riding with her father, called to Birger, "Stop
a moment and listen!" So the two posting-carts halted while the children
listened to the music of a mountain stream not far away. Mingled with the
sound of the rushing water was the whirr of a busy sawmill in the depths