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A couple of seconds later Herr Ermenrich, the stork, lit beside the boy. He bent down and poked him with his bill to awaken him. Instantly the boy sat up. "I'm not asleep, Herr Ermenrich," he said. "How does it happen that you are out in the middle of the night, and how is everything at Glimminge castle? Do you want to speak with mother Akka?"
But the stork, despite his misery, could not refrain from teasing the cat. "Don't worry so, Monsie house-cat!" said he. "Can't you see that mother Akka and Thumbietot have come to save the castle? You can be certain that they'll succeed. Now I must stand up to sleep and I do so with the utmost calm. To-morrow, when I awaken, there won't be a single gray rat in Glimminge castle."
They sat still on their estates, and in the meantime the gray rats took from them farm after farm, city after city. They were starved out, forced out, rooted out. In Skåne they had not been able to maintain themselves in a single place except Glimminge castle.
In a nest in the attic lived a pair of gray owls; in the secret passages hung bats; in the kitchen oven lived an old cat; and down in the cellar there were hundreds of old black rats. Rats are not held in very high esteem by other animals; but the black rats at Glimminge castle were an exception.
Only in one and another old and secluded place could one run across a few of them; and nowhere were they to be found in such large numbers as in Glimminge castle. When an animal folk die out, it is generally the human kind who are the cause of it; but that was not the case in this instance.
But all this she kept to herself. To the stork she only remarked, that she couldn't believe he would be willing to move from a house where storks had resided ever since it was built. Then the stork suddenly asked the geese if they had seen the gray rats who were marching toward Glimminge castle.
"Well then, let it be as you wish," said Akka. "Thanks!" said the boy, and he felt so happy that he had to cry for very joy just as he had cried before from sorrow. In south-eastern Skåne not far from the sea there is an old castle called Glimminge. It is a big and substantial stone house; and can be seen over the plain for miles around.
But those who were acquainted with the gray rats must have known that it was because the human kind used Glimminge castle as a grain store-house that the gray ones could not rest before they had taken possession of the place. Monday, March twenty-eighth. Early one morning the wild geese who stood and slept on the ice in Vomb Lake were awakened by long calls from the air.
When the tiny creature had played all the gray rats out of Glimminge castle, he began to wander slowly from the courtyard out on the highway; and all the gray rats followed him, because the tones from that pipe sounded so sweet to their ears that they could not resist them. The tiny creature walked before them and charmed them along with him, on the road to Vallby.
"It's too light to sleep to-night," answered Herr Ermenrich. "Therefore I concluded to travel over here to Karl's Island and hunt you up, friend Thumbietot. I learned from the seamew that you were spending the night here. I have not as yet moved over to Glimminge castle, but am still living at Pommern." The boy was simply overjoyed to think that Herr Ermenrich had sought him out.
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