Part 21 (1/2)

When I was rested, I journeyed through the islands to find old friends, and found them The heartiness of the welco lad to see me It shone out of their faces and all over them I shall always remember that journey: the people in the cars that were forever lunching and urging h we had never met before

Were we not fellow-travellers? How, then, could we be strangers?

And when they learned I was from New York, the inquiries after Hans or Fritz, somewhere in Nebraska or Dakota Had I ever met them? and, if I did, would I tell them I had seen father, mother, or brother, and that they ell? And would I coenuine regret that I had mostly to refuse My vacation could not last forever As it was, I packed it full enough to last s, too Shall I ever forget that ride on the stage up the shore-road fro farainst passing any vehicle on the road and preferred to take the dust of them all, until we looked like a pair of dusty millers up there on the box Toonly that there was always some one ahead, which was a fact When at last we drew near our destination he found hier short After so to his seat beside me, said quietly: ”One of them fell out on his head, they say, down the road I had him to deliver at the inn, but it can't be blamed on me, can it?”

He was not the only philosopher in that coers, one apparently an official, sheriff, or so, the other a doctor, who debated all the way the propriety of unifor the physician in attendance upon executions The sheriff evidently considered such a step an invasion of his official privilege

”Why,” cried the doctor, ”it is almost impossible now to tell the difference between the doctor and the delinquent” ”Ah, well,”

sighed the other, placidly settling back in his seat ”Just let theh forest and field, over hill and vale, by the still waters where far islands lay shi+ fairy-lands, into the deep, gloo I was born on the edge of it, and once its majesty has sunk into a human soul, that soul is forever after attuned to it How little we have the reater the need that we should make of that little the ainst heredity as the arch-eneout of the dark moor, the lonely cairn that sheltered the bones of my fathers before the White Christ preached peace to their land, a great yearning comes over me There I want to lay mine There I want to sleep, under the heather where the bees hum drowsily in the purple brooht Mist from the marshes they are, but the people think them wraiths Half heathen yet, a is to be a heathen, heathen am I, not half, but whole, and will be all my days

But not so He is the heathen who loves not his native land Thor long since lost his grip on the sons of the vikings Over the battlefield he drives his chariot yet, and his hammer strikes fire as of old The British reen; the Gerht for very life the little country held its ohole winter against two great powers on rapine bent; felt it at Helgoland where its sailors scattered their navies and drove thereater transforentle unless when fighting for its firesides

Forest and field teeends that tell of it; tell of the battle between the old and the new, and the victory of peace Every hilltop bears witness to it

[Illustration: Holy Andrew's Cross ]

Here by the wayside stands a wooden cross All the country-side knows the story of ”Holy Andrew,” the priest whose piety wrought end, he went on a pilgrie to the Holy Land, and was left behind by his companions because he would not sail, be wind and tide ever so fair, without first going to mass to pray for a safe journey When, his devotions ended, he went to the dock, he saw only the sail of the departing craft sinking below the horizon Overco of friends at hoain see, when a horseman reined in his steed and bade him mount with him; he would see hier's arms When he awoke he lay on this hill, where the cross has stood ever since, heard the cattle low and saw the spire of his church in the village where the vesper bells were ringing Many rio A masterfulthe truth when he needed it, and kneard the faith and the church co By such were the old rovers weaned from their wild life What a mark he left upon his day is shown yet by the tradition that disaster impends if the cross is allowed to fall into decay Once when it was neglected, the cattle-plague broke out in the parish and ceased, says the story, not until it was restored, when right away there was an end

Holy Andrew's church still stands over yonder Not that one with the twin towers That has another story to tell, one that was believed to be half or wholly legend, too, until a recent restoration of it brought to light under the ash of the refor proof that it was all true

It was in the days of Holy Andrew that the pious knight, Sir Asker Ryg, going to the war, told the lady Inge to build a new church

The folk-song tells as the matter with the old one ”all of clay, straw-thatched and grireen, And rent with a crack full deep; Tinaweth ever with sharper tooth, Leaves little towas left to mend in the church of Fjenneslev, so she ht in the song, ”to pray to God in such a broken wrack The wind blows in and the rain drips”:--

Christ has gone to His heavenly hoer besee, ”an' thou bearest to our house a boy, build a tower upon the church; if a daughter coht his way, but huht, and the return with victory; the impatient ride that left all the rest behind as they neared hoht as he bent his head over the saddle-bow, riding up the hill over the edge of which the church ht be a tower; and his ”sly laugh” when it coh Those twin brothers becae; the one aValdeht when there was need ”as ith sword as with book” Absalon left the country Christian to the core It was his clerk, Saxo, surnaave to the world the collection of chronicles and traditionary lore to which e our Ha's church at FJennesloevlille ]

The church stands there with its ters They -hidden paintings the story of Sir Asker's return and gratitude, just as tradition had handed it down from the twelfth century It is not the first tiuide than carping critics, and likely it will not be the last

[Illustration: ”Horse-meat to-day!” ]

I rediscovered on that trip the ancient bellwo-press, the extinct chimney-sweep, the ornamental policeman who for professional excitement reads detective novels at home, and the sacrificial rites of--of what or whom I shall leave unsaid But itof the sort that pro led to the slaughter in the wake of the town druned it as an advertisement that there would be fresh horse-meat for sale that day The horse took it as a compliment and walked in the procession with visible pride And I found the church in which no collection was ever taken It was the very Dom in my own old town The velvet purses that used to be poked into the pews on Sundays on long sticks were , and I asked about the time, said the beadle, and added, ”It was a kind of Catholic fashi+on anyway, and no good” The pews had apparently suspected as htily aloof frooing

The old town ever had its oays They were h soht of Knud Clausen's way of doing irl, she went to church to be confirhbors and Knud's barn-yard was a sore subject between the-roomHe sometimes protested and oftener offered to buy, but Knud would neither listen nor sell But he loved the ground his neighbor's pretty daughter walked upon, as did, indeed, every poorthe offensive pile with fresh cut grass and leaves, and sticking it full of flowers It ell hts at any cost These secure, go any length to oblige a neighbor

Journeying so, I ca,--old King Christian, beloved of his people,--where oncePalace by playing ”the Wild Man of Borneo” with the official silver lions in the great knights' hall And I saw the old town no more But in my dreams I walk its peaceful streets, listen to the whisper of the reeds in the dry reen castle hill, and hear my mother call me once more her boy And I know that I shall find them, with my lost childhood, e all reach home at last

CHAPTER XVI

THE AMERICAN MADE