dead trees to put forth
in leaf, and comforted desperate men with summer in the midst of the
Frozen Sea" . . . with much beside. But all this appears in the tale,
which I will head only with the name of the writer.

II.--PETER KURT'S MANUSCRIPT [1]

Now that our troubles are over, and I sit by the mast of our late
unhappy ship, not knowing if I am on earth or in paradise, but full-fed
and warm in all my limbs, yea pierced and glowing with the love of
Almighty God, I am resolved to take pen and use my unfrozen ink in
telling out of what misery His hand hath led us to this present Eden.

I who write this am Peter Kurt, and I was the steward of my master Ebbe
while he dwelt in his own castle of Nebbegaard. Poor he was then, and
poor, I suppose, he is still in all but love and the favour of God; but
in those days the love was but an old servant's (to wit, my own), and
the favour of God not evident, but the poverty, on the other hand,
bitterly apparent in all our housekeeping. We lived alone, with a
handful of servants--sometimes as few as three--in the castle which
stands between the sandhills and the woods, as you sail into Veile
Fiord. All these woods, as far away as to Rosenvold, had been the good
knight his father's, but were lost to us before Ebbe's birth, and leased
on pledge to the Knight Borre, of Egeskov, of whom I am to tell; and
with them went all the crew of verderers, huntsmen, grooms, prickers,
and ostringers that had kept Nebbegaard cheerful the year round.
His mother had died at my master's birth, and the knight himself but two
years after, so that the lad grew up in his poverty with no heritage but
a few barren acres of sand, a tumbling house, and his father's sword,
and small prospect of winning the broad lands out of Borre's clutches.

Nevertheless, under my tutoring he grew into a tall lad and a bold, a
good swordsman, skilful at the tilt and in handling a boat; but not
talkative or free in his address of strangers. The most of his days he
spent in fishing, or in the making and mending of gear; and his
evenings, after our lesson in sword-play, in the reading of books (of
which Nebbegaard had good store), and specially of the Icelanders,
skalds and sagamen; also at times in the study of Latin with me, who had
been bred to the priesthood, but left it for love of his father, my
foster-brother, and now had no ambition of my own but to serve this lad
and make him as good a man.

But there were