“You have no faith in me; you do not trust to the constancy of my amour! Heavens! Do you see the eastern louver-window in St. Nikolaj? For three long days have I sat there gazing at your fair countenance, as you bent over your broidery frame.”
“How unlucky you are! You can scarce open your mouth, but I can catch you in loose talk. I never sit with my broidery frame toward St. Nikolaj. Do you know this rigmarole?—
’Twas black night,
Troll was in a plight;
For man held him tight.
To the troll said he:
‘If you would be free,
Then teach me quick,
Without guile or trick,
One word of perfect truth.’
Up spake the troll: ‘In sooth!’
Man let him go.
None on earth, I trow,
Could call troll liar for saying so.”
Ulrik Frederik bowed deferentially and left her without a word.
She looked after him, as he crossed the room. He did walk gracefully. His silk hose fitted him without fold or wrinkle. How pretty they were at the ankle, where they met the long, narrow shoe! She liked to look at him. She had never before noticed that he had a tiny pink scar in his forehead.
Furtively she glanced at her own hands and made a slight grimace,—the fingers seemed to her too short.
[CHAPTER III]
WINTER came with hard times for the beasts of the forest and the birds of the fields. It was a poor Christmas within mud-walled huts and timbered ships. The Western Sea was thickly studded with wrecks, icy hulks, splintered masts, broken boats, and dead ships. Argosies were hurled upon the coast, shattered to worthless fragments, sunk, swept away, or buried in the sand; for the gale blew toward land with a high sea and deadly cold, and human hands were powerless against it. Heaven and earth were one reek of stinging, whirling snow that drifted in through cracked shutters and ill-fitting hatches to poverty and rags, and pierced under eaves and doors to wealth and fur-bordered mantles. Beggars and wayfaring folk froze to death in the shelter of ditches and dikes; poor people died of cold on their bed of straw, and the cattle of the rich fared not much better.
The storm abated, and after it came a clear, tingling frost, which brought disaster on the land—winter pay for summer folly! The Swedish army walked over the Danish waters. Peace was declared, and spring followed with green budding leaves and fair weather, but the young men of Sjælland did not ride a-Maying that year; for the Swedish soldiers were everywhere. There was peace indeed, but it carried the burdens of war and seemed not likely to live long. Nor did it. When the May garlands had turned dark and stiff under the midsummer sun, the Swedes went against the ramparts of Copenhagen.
During vesper service on the second Sunday in August, the tidings suddenly came: “The Swedes have landed at Korsör.” Instantly the streets were thronged. People walked about quietly and soberly, but they talked a great deal; they all talked at once, and the sound of their voices and footsteps swelled to a loud murmur that neither rose nor fell and never ceased, but went on with a strange, heavy monotony.