"I will promise you. Pastor Lindal," said Mrs. Hardy, "that all the time she can she shall be in Denmark, and that I will be to her as her own mother." Mrs. Hardy held out her hand to the Pastor, and the compact then made ever after was adhered to.
Mrs. Hardy rose, and kissed Helga on her flaxen hair. "Will you tell John, or I?" she asked.
"I cannot," replied Helga, earnestly.
"Then, Herr Pastor," said Mrs. Hardy, "we will go on deck, and I should like a walk about Aarhus, if you will take me, and John can take his wife that is to be."
When Mrs. Hardy came on deck, she said to her son, "The first of August, John; it is so settled."
John Hardy lifted his mother from the deck, and positively kissed her in the sight of his own men and a numerous crowd of curious Danes, who had collected to see the yacht, and if Helga had not jumped ashore, it was not at all improbable but that she might have shared the same fate.
The trust and confidence the mother and son had in each other was a comfort to the Pastor. It was the best guarantee for Helga's future.
"It is late," said the Pastor; "but I know the clerk at the Domkirke (cathedral), and you can possibly see it."
The advantage of seeing the Domkirke with the Pastor was obvious to Mrs. Hardy, and they were much interested in the details he gave of the old vestments preserved in the Domkirke and the ancient folding pictures at the altar, the date of which is 1479, but the pictures are Italian and older.
"The old church tradition," said the Pastor, "is that the patron saint, St. Clement, after suffering martyrdom, came ashore after floating about the sea for eleven hundred years, bound to a ship's anchor, which circumstance is delineated in more than one place in the Domkirke. One of the stories of the Domkirke is recorded on a stone," continued the Pastor. "It is the figure of a woman with a hole in her left breast. She was shot by a rejected lover, as she went to the Domkirke to attend the church service of the times. The stone must have been once in an horizontal position, as it is worn as if it had been placed at the entrance of the Domkirke, as is believed to be the case, and much trodden on."