listening to the birds till I forget my story. It is long
since they left me; but I am full fed, and the ship floats pleasantly.
After so much misery I am as one rocked on the bosom of God; and the
pine resin has a pleasant smell.

[1] The courtship of Ebbe, the poor esquire of Nebbegaard, and the
maiden Mette is a traditional tale of West Jutland. A version of it was
Englished by Thorpe from Carit Etlar's "_Eventyr og Folkesagen fra
Jylland_": but this, while it tells of Ebbe's adventures at the
"Bride-show," and afterwards at the hunting-party, contains no account
of the lovers' escape and voyage, or of the miracle which brought them
comfort at the last. Indeed, Master Kurt contradicts the common tale in
many ways, but above all in his ending, wherein (although he narrates a
miracle) I find him worthy of belief.

SINDBAD ON BURRATOR.

I heard this story in a farmhouse upon Dartmoor, and I give it in the
words of the local doctor who told it. We were a reading-party of
three undergraduates and a Christ Church don. The don had slipped on a
boulder, two days before, while fishing the river Meavy, and sprained
his ankle; hence Dr. Miles's visit. The two had made friends over the
don's fly-book and the discovery that what the doctor did not know about
Dartmoor trout was not worth knowing; hence an invitation to extend his
visit over dinner. At dinner the talk diverged from sport to the
ancient tin-works, stone circles, camps and cromlechs on the tors about
us, and from there to touch speculatively on the darker side of the old
religions: hence at length the doctor's story, which he told over the
pipes and whisky, leaning his arms upon the table and gazing at it
rather than at us, as though drawing his memories out of depths below
its polished surface.

It must be thirty--yes, thirty--years ago (he said) since I met the man,
on a bright November morning, when the Dartmoor hounds were drawing
Burrator Wood. Burrator House in those days belonged to the Rajah
Brooke--Brooke of Sarawak--who had bought it from Harry Terrell; or
rather it had been bought for him by the Baroness Burdett Coutts and
other admirers in England. Harry Terrell--a great sportsman in his
day--had been loth enough to part with it, and when the bargain was
first proposed, had named at random a price which was about double what
he had given for the place. The Rajah closed with the sum at once,
asked him to make a list of everything i