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Osa and Mats set out for their old home on the heath. When they arrived they were shocked to find the little cabin in flames. They went to the parsonage and there they learned that a railroad workman had seen their father at Malmberget, far up in Lapland. He had been working in a mine and possibly was still there.
Maybe it was the same one who rode along on his goose up here in the air and dropped his wooden shoe." "Yes, it must have been," said little Mats. They turned the wooden shoe about and examined it carefully for it isn't every day that one happens across a Goa-Nisse's wooden shoe on the highway. "Wait, wait, little Mats!" said Osa, the goose-girl. "There is something written on one side of it."
The day of the eldest daughter's burial the mother closed the cabin and left home with the two remaining children, Osa and Mats. She went down to Skåne to work in the beet fields, and found a place at the Jordberga sugar refinery. She was a good worker and had a cheerful and generous nature. Everybody liked her.
"They say he has gone fishing," said the workman. "They're not sure that he can get back to the camp to-night; but as soon as the weather clears, one of them will go in search of him." Thereupon he turned to the Lapps and went on talking to them. He did not wish to give Osa an opportunity to question him further about Jon Esserson.
He was walking on a stubble-field, in West Vemminghög, tending a goose-flock; and beside him, on the field, walked those same Småland children, with their geese. As soon as he saw them, he ran up on the stone-hedge and shouted: "Oh, good-day, Osa goose-girl! Oh, good-day, little Mats!"
Two of them carried him to the hut where he and Osa were staying. They did all they could to save him, but it was too late. Thumbietot felt so sorry for poor Osa. He wanted to help and comfort her; but he knew that if he were to go to her now, he would only frighten her such as he was! The night after the burial of little Mats, Osa straightway shut herself in her hut.
"I'll send some one to help you." Just as Osa, the goose girl, dreamed that little Mats had said this, there was a knock at the door. It was a real knock not something she heard in the dream, but she was so held by the dream that she could not tell the real from the unreal. As she went on to open the door, she thought: "This must be the person little Mats promised to send me."
It was far along toward morning and Osa, spent by the strain of her hard day, finally fell asleep. She dreamed that little Mats softly opened the door and stepped into the room. "Osa, you must go and find father," he said. "How can I when I don't even know where he is?" she replied in her dream. "Don't worry about that," returned little Mats in his usual, cheery way.
She was right, for it was Thumbietot come to talk to her about her father. When he saw that she was not afraid of him, he told her in a few words where her father was and how to reach him. While he was speaking, Osa, the goose girl, gradually regained consciousness; when he had finished she was wide awake.
They had a talent for trading and soon began buying eggs and butter from the farmers, which they sold to the workers at the sugar refinery. Osa was the older, and, by the time she was thirteen, she was as responsible as a grown woman. She was quiet and serious, while Mats was lively and talkative. His sister used to say to him that he could outcackle the geese.
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