puffs of wind that shook down the yellowing
leaves from the hedgerows. Sure token of a
coming storm.

At one small station, in Funen, midway
between Flensburg and Odensee where I had
found the postmaster asleep and his servants
absent at some village feast, and had
consequently had to aid myself in harnessing the
fresh horses before the traces were quite
adjusted, a cloud of dust came rolling like
smoke along the road, and up dashed a
"forbudcl," or avant courier, very hot and
breathless, with his horse in a lather of foam,
vociferating for horses.

"My master's in a wonderful hurry, wonderschon!"
said the man, swinging himself down
from his reeking saddle, and stamping his heavy
boots upon the ground to get rid of the dust,
"but he pays well, and wants to be well served."

And, indeed, the animal he had ridden looked,
with drooping head and spur-marked flanks,
none the better for the furious rate at which
she had sped along. The postmaster looked at
her rather ruefully. " If I mount a forbudd for
the traveller I shan't allow him to go tearing
along, wild-huntsman fashion, as thou hast,
Niel Hansen. Is he some foreign ambassador,
my lad, or going on the king's service, that he
ruins horseflesh in this way, all that he may get
some hours earlier to Copenhagen?"

The postilion replied that he knew nothing
of him. The stranger was a foreigner, but
he spoke the best of Danish and German, and
tossed his dollars about as children toss beach
pebbles, all the time rating and expostulating
with those whom he found too slow in driving
or putting horses to his carriage. He was
some great baron, no doubt. Perhaps a
Russian or a Swede. At any rate, he was eager
to hasten on, and the postmaster had better get
the cattle ready forthwith. By this time my
own caleche was ready, and, in the stir and
exhilaration of rapid motion, I soon forgot the
impatient traveller who was a few leagues behind.
The roads were in unusually good order, and the
latter part of my journey was speedily performed;
but as I came in sight of the dark blue sea
line and the white houses and low church tower
of Nyeborg, the copper-coloured masses of cloud
rolled sullenly up, and the peculiar gloom that
precedes a summer storm fell like a veil over
land and sea. Then came a flash of lightning,
and as if it had been a signal for elemental
war, hail and rain came dashing fiercely in our
faces, making the horses swerve and rear; the
thunder rolled in emulation of the roaring of
the wind that suddenly sprang up. It was in
a drenched and draggled condition, half blinded
by the lightning, and soaked with wet, that we
reached Nyeborg.

"The steamer for Korsoe?" was my first
inquiry.

The landlord of the clean little inn removed
his blue and white china pipe from his mouth,
and pointed with the stem of it towards the
ferry. I cauld see that the water was
everywhere flecked with foam, and that no glimpse of
the opposite shore could be distinguished through
the driving rain. There was no steamer visible in
the little haven, except one black and silent craft,
lying snugly under the shelter of some piles,
with deserted deck and smokeless chimney.

"You won't sleep in the island to-night, Herr
Englander. The last boat had a tough job to
struggle across. The wind's getting round to
the north, too. Not a skipper in Denmark, in
his senses, would try to make the run over to
Korsoe this evening, not even if his heart were
as stout as old Tordenskiold's."

The landlord's assertions were fully
confirmed by the sailors and custom-house officers
whom I found crowding together under some
sheds near the wharf, and wistfully peering
through the rain and gathering darkness at the
tempestuous sea. It was a mere summer squall,
they said, but they were afraid that mischief
would be done among the fishers and small
coasting craft. However, the storm would
doubtless have spent its fury before morning,
and the ferry would then be easily traversed, so
the delay was not very serious, after all. An
hour or so earlier I should have been in time to
be a passenger on board the last boat that had
ventured out, and, at the cost of some risk and
a wetting, should have slept in Ringstad. As
it was, I was too late.

The accommodation which the kro of Nyeborg
offered me was of the character most common
in Denmark. Everything was exquisitely clean,
homely, and snug. By a slight stretch of
imagination, I could have fancied myself a guest at
one of those old English hostelries that Izaak
Walton selected as the rendezvous of his
Piscator and Venator, that quaint type of rustic
trimness with its lavender-scented sheets, sanded
floors, honeysuckle- draped porch, and rude
plenty. The supper that was set before me
was a good one, and so was the Rhenish wine.
I had not quite finished either, before I heard
a rapid roll of wheels and a mighty cracking
of whips. I could distinguish by the sound
that a carriage drawn by four horses had dashed
up to the door of the kro. Then there was a
hum and clatter of voices and feet, and a tap
at the door of my room. In came the
handmaiden, who combined the duties of waiter and
chambermaid, and who was as spruce in her
velvet bodice and scarlet kirtle, her heavy gold
earrings and silver hair-skewers, as if she had
no work to do. Her round blue eyes were very
wide open with astonishment.

"Herr Englander," she said, in her Jutland
dialect, so like Yorkshire English in its breadth
and sound, "a great knight or count has just
arrived, extra-post, and—"

"—And if Mr. Compton will pardon his
intrusion, he is here to answer for himself," said
another, and a stronger voice, speaking in very
excellent English. A tall elderly gentleman
appeared on the threshold, bowing politely to
me, hat in hand, and wearing a long blue cloak,
on which the rain-drops glistened. The newly-
arrived traveller, no doubt. But what he could
want with me? unless I should prove to be the