PAGE
The Old and the New [vii]
Chapter I [1]
Chapter II [26]
Chapter III [49]
Chapter IV [78]
Chapter V [104]
Chapter VI [143]
Chapter VII [169]
Chapter VIII [186]
Chapter IX. Our Beautiful Summer [229]
King Frederik at Home [257]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
“Post Office” [Frontispiece]
“Where blossoming lilacs dip over garden walls” [9]
“The old Domkirke reared its gray head” facing [12]
The Causeway in a Storm [15]
Fanö Women [21]
Seal of the Old Town in the Thirteenth Century [26]
An Old House [31]
The Iron Hand [32]
A Watchman [38]
“He found his prisoner faithfully guarding the gun when he came back” facing [48]
“Eyes that spoke of things unseen by the crowd” [49]
Peer Down’s Slip facing [50]
Neighbor Quedens [52]
The Good Dean of the Domkirke [58]
The Wife of the Middle-miller [60]
Venus [61]
“Did the honors on ceremonial occasions” facing [62]
Liar Hans [65]
The Old Family Doctor facing [74]
“They crept about, the old men with their staffs” [77]
The Christmas Sheaf [78]
The Nisse facing [80]
“Blowing in Yule from the grim old tower” ” [84]
“The whole family turned to and helped” ” [92]
“We joined hands and danced around the tree” ” [95]
“We ‘smashed’ the New Year in” ” [100]
“We caught them napping there one dark night” ” [102]
Getting Ready for the Review [104]
The Stork came in April facing [104]
A Girl from the North Sea Islands ” [112]
“There were booths with toys and booths with trumpets” ” [115]
The Girl Market ” [119]
Where the Cows go in through the Street Door [121]
“Trenchers of steaming sausage” [130]
“I threw the last pebble” [141]
King Harald’s Stone [143]
“In my dreams I sit by the creek” [146]
Where I shot my First Duck facing [147]
Picking Rävlinger in the Moor [153]
Dagmar’s Despoiled Tomb [159]
In Holme Week—The Old Ferry Raft facing [162]
Cruising up to the Seem Church [167]
Riberhus [169]
The King’s Ride over the Moor [176]
“For God and the King” facing [179]
“The King and his men knelt upon the battlefield” ” [180]
Danish Women ransomed their King ” [181]
“Comforted the King in sorrow and defeat” [181]
Jackdaws in Council [186]
“Ha! you were just going to fire it” [195]
The Latin School Teachers [198]
The Chimney-sweep [207]
“We saw it on moonlight nights” [209]
The North Gate [212]
The Emperor’s Birthday facing [215]
“It’s come” [227]
The Accursed Candlestick [229]
A Strange Figure in Kilts [234]
The Restored Domkirke facing [235]
The Cat-head Door ” [237]
The Old Cloister-church [239]
King Christian comes from Church [249]
King Frederik [259]

THE OLD TOWN

CHAPTER I

The other day, when I was busy in my garden, I heard the whir of swift wings and saw a flight of birds coming from the hills in the east. Something in the way in which they flew stirred me with a sudden thrill, and I stood up, feeling forty years younger all at once.

“Blackbirds,” said Mike, looking aloft, but I knew better. I watched them wistfully, with eager hope, and when they were over me and I saw their orange bills, I knew that I had not been mistaken. They were starlings, beloved friends of my boyhood, come across the seas at last after all these years, looking for me, perhaps. It seemed as if it must be so, and I dropped spade and trowel, and took up hammer and saw to make boxes for them as I used to, so that they might know I was waiting to welcome them. I am waiting now. Every day I look to see if my feathered chum is there, perched at my window. And he will come, I know. For he cannot have forgotten the good times we had in the long ago.

You see, we grew up together. Almost the earliest thing I remember is the box at my bedroom window which the first rays of the rising sun struck in spring. Then, as soon as ever the winter snows were gone and the daffodils peeped through the half-frozen crust, some morning there would be a mighty commotion in that box. Black shadows darted in and out, and a great scratching and thumping went on. And while I lay and watched with heart beating fast,—for was not here my songster playmate back with the summer and the sunlight on his burnished wing?—out he came on the peg for a sidelong peep at my window, and sat and whistled the old tune, nodding to the bare trees he knew with his brave promise that presently Jack Frost would be banished for good, and all would be right. Was he not there to prove it? And it was even so. The summer was right on his trail always.

The weeks passed, and the Old Town lay buried in a dreamy sea of blossoming elders. In field and meadow the starling was busy from early dawn till the sun was far in the west; for his young, of whom there was always a vigorous family,—and oh! the glorious blue eggs we loved to peep at before Mrs. Starling had taken them under her wing,—had a healthy appetite and required no end of grubs and worms. But whether they went to sleep early or he thought they had had enough, always when the setting sun gilded the top of the old poplar, he would come with all his friends and sing his evening song. In the very top branches, swaying with the summer wind, they would sit and whistle the clear notes in the minor key I hear yet when I am worn and tired, and that tell me that some day it will all come back, the joy and the sunshine of the young days. It was for him I turned my boyish hands to their first labor of love. I made him a house of an empty starch box, and later on, when I had learned carpentering, I built for his family a tenement of three flats that hung by my window many years after I knew it no more. I had long been absorbed in the fight with tenements made for human kind by builders with no such friendly feelings, when my father wrote that the winter storms had blown down the box and broken it, and that written inside in my boyish hand, they found these words: