merry day today in honour of our priest.
We will drive out into the country, and we
will invite a number of our good friends to
accompany us."

All was now bustle and stir in the house.
Boys and men were sent up and down the
town with invitations. The large square
Holstein carriage was brought out, the
harness was polished, and the horses' manes
plaited with red ribbons.

"Now that our Ludwig is become a clergyman,"
said Jens coachman, as he curried the
new brown mare, "he shall have a pair of
horses so bright that their match cannot be
found in the royal stables."

Before long the other families were all
seated in their carriages; and Jens coachman
—mounted on the box in his new, splendid
livery,—led the van with the great Holstein
carriage, and cracked his whip lustily. A
long line of carriages rolled merrily behind
us, whilst a number of young men, who alone
occupied the last, sang beautiful songs as they
drove along. Cheerful faces looked forth
from the windows of the streets, and nodded
to us as we went by, whilst the bright
sunshine was spread over us through the clear
atmosphere.

When we had passed the town gate and
were come upon the smooth road of the open
country, my uncle took the reins that he
might himself try the new mare.

"What are you about, Johan?" said my
aunt, "let Jens drive; I have much more
faith in his driving than in yours."

"Master can drive very well," said Jens
good-naturedly, "the mare is as quiet as a
lamb, and I shall be just at hand, even if they
should be skittish."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" cried my aunt,
are they skittish?"

"No, that they are not, madam," said
Jens; '' the near horse is a little bit so, but
he goes well enough in a common way.
Madam has no idea what good-tempered
beasts they are.—Master! give me the
reins!"

More Jens did not say. A cow had come
up from the roadside ditch, and the near
horse, frightened, had suddenly sprung aside;
the carriage was turned off the road, Jens
attempted to seize the reins, but he only
caught one, which pulling too tightly, the
carriage was overturned.

When we others had crept forth from the
carriage, and convinced ourselves that we
were sound in all our limbs, we missed my
uncle. He had been thrown to a distance,
and when he attempted to raise himself, we
discovered that he had broken his leg.

The merry excursion into the country was
at once changed into mourning. We had
driven forth with the cheerful cracking of
whips and the voice of song; now, like a
funeral procession, we drove home with my
uncle. The friendly faces were still at the
windows, and the sun was still shining even
as when we drove out; but what a change
there was in us.

The surgeon, after eight days, began to
shake his head. On the twelfth day he told
my aunt that he felt it his duty to say, that if
my uncle had yet any affairs to settle in this
world, no time should be lost in his so doing.

"Who is to tell him this?" said my aunt,
looking at the book-keeper and then at me;
but neither of us offered to do it.

"Then I must do it myself," said my aunt,
and dried her eyes; "it will be the first
unwelcome word I ever said to him."

She went into his chamber, and they
remained an hour together. When she came
forth, she did not weep, and she said to me:
"Your uncle wishes to see all his servants;
let them come up."

They all knew that my uncle would die;
and when they heard his wish that all should
go up and take leave of him, it was just like
a Christmas morning, when everybody goes to
church.

One after another of his eighteen men-
servants went into the room, took him by the
hand, and said, "Farewell, master!" The
hard, Zealand countenances of these men
looked comparatively phlegmatic and
indifferent as they stood outside his chamber
door; but, as each one passed out again, he
wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve, and
wept.

The following morning my uncle died.

All the town followed him to his grave,
but he was carried by his men-servants. It
seemed to strike some students who were in
the town from Copenhagen as rather a
strange sight to see two of the herdmen, in
their red peasant's frocks, among the bearers,
and to hear all the eighteen men-servants
singing a psalm together. But, when the
coffin was lowered and earth scattered over
it, and these men all stood with their hats
before their faces, and then, pale and silent,
left the churchyard, the students themselves
looked grave.

A few days afterwards, when I was coming
up the court, I heard the men singing. They
all sang the same words and to the same
tune. It was a song which one of them had
made about my uncle, and the refrain was:

"God give him gladness in Heaven!"

THE REASON WHY.

MR. MACAULAY has preserved in his history
the burden of a ballad which was once sung
all over Cornwall by men, women, and even
by children of every class and grade; but of
which he seems to think that only these two
lines now linger in living memory—

"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die?
Then thirty thousand Cornish boys will know the
reason why."

Trelawney was one of the seven bishops