German. You don't say!

Man from Smaland. Oh, I know a lot more. He means to take the
priests and the monks away from us in order to give everything to
the gentlefolk.

Dane. To the gentlefolk?

Man from Smaland. Exactly! I wish King Christian--God bless him!
--had cut off a few more heads.

Windrank. Well, is the King like that? I thought he had those
noble fellows by the ear.

Man from Smaland. He? No, he lets them be born with the right to
cut oak on my ground, if I had any. For I did have a patch of
land once, you see, but then came a lord who said that my
great-grandmother had taken it all in loan from his great-grandfather,
and so there was an end to that story.

German. Why, is the King like that? I would never have believed
it.

Man from Smaland. Indeed he is! Those high-born brats run around
with their guns in our woods and pick off the deer out of sheer
mischief, but if one of us peasants were dying from hunger and
took a shot at one of the beasts--well, then he wouldn't have to
starve to death, for they'd hang him--but not to an oak--Lord,
no! That would be a shame for such a royal tree. No, just to an
ordinary pine. The pine, you see, has no crown, and that's why it