sked the Pastor.

"A week," replied John; "or you can land at any place, and return by
rail in a few hours."

"No, Herr Pastor," interposed Mrs. Hardy, "you must not bind us to
time. We shall see if the cruise is a benefit to you, and if so, you
must prolong it."

The Pastor always surrendered when challenged by Mrs. Hardy.

Whilst they were at lunch, the _Rosendal_ steam yacht was passing
Samso.

"This island," said John Hardy, "appears from the chart to be a sand
bank washed up by the sea."

"So is all Denmark," said Pastor Lindal. "The legends and traditions
belonging to Samso, however, are not as old as those of Jutland, and
it would therefore appear not to have been inhabited at so early a
period. There is an historical tradition that in 1576 a mermaid
appeared to a man of Samso, and directed him to go to Kallundborg,
where King Frederick II. was then staying with his court, and tell him
that his queen would have a son, which would become a mighty ruler.
The king questioned the man, who stated that the mermaid's name was
Isbrand, and that she lived in the sea, not far from land, with her
mother and grandmother, and that it was the latter that had foretold
the birth of Queen Margrethe, who united the three Scandinavian
kingdoms under one crown. King Frederick sent the man home, and
commanded him not to come to the court again.

The king's son was Christian IV., under whose rule Denmark attained
its zenith of power. Once, when Christian IV. was driven ashore by a
storm on Samso, he saw the priest's man ploughing. The king took the
plough and ploughed a furrow, and told the man to tell his master that
the king had ploughed for him."

"A good way to acquire popularity in those times," remarked
Mrs. Hardy. "But are there any more stories of the kind?"

"There is the story of the Church of the Holy Cross. There is a tablet
said to be yet in the church, on which there is an inscription,"
replied the Pastor. "This states that a gilt cross in the church was
washed ashore bound to a corpse, but that when they would take the
corpse to a particular churchyard, that four horses could not move the
waggon in which it was placed. They then tried to draw the waggon to
another churchyard, with the same result; but at last they directed
the horses to the church at Onsberg, and then two horses could easily
draw it; so the corpse was buried in the eastern end of the church,
and the church afterwards called the Church of the