h that you can realize the contrast."

"That is very possible," replied Pastor Lindal. "The same landscape
painted by different artists would make each their impression; how
much more, then, would nature, with influences we cannot understand,
produce different effects?"

Mrs. Hardy looked as if a fresh field of thought was opened to her,
and her son observed his mother's look of surprise.

"I have been often astonished," he said, "to hear from Pastor Lindal
and Helga a similar cast of thought that has given me something to
think of for long after. I think it is the outcome of a natural
singleness of thought we do not often meet."

"I believe you are right, John," said his mother. "But possibly Herr
Pastor can tell us a tradition of Svendborg;" and she raised her voice
and addressed him.

"There is the tradition of St. Jorgen," he said, "or, as you call it
in English, St. George and the dragon. The features of the story, of
course, are the same; with us the tradition runs as follows:--There
was a temple inhabited by a dragon, who issued from it and laid waste
the country. Each day the monster craved a human life, until at last
lots were drawn as to who should be the victim, and from this neither
the king nor his family were exempt, and the lot fell on his only
daughter. The king offered half his kingdom to any one who should
destroy the dragon. A knight called Jorgen attempted to do so, by
putting poisoned cakes in the dragon's way; but that availed nothing.
He then attacked it, and the monster retreated to Svendborg; but it
again came forth, and a combat between the knight and the dragon
ensued. The dragon was slain, and where its poisonous blood poured out
no grass will grow. The combat is said to be delineated on the church
bells. It is very probably only an echo of the Greek story of Perseus
and Andromeda. You will observe the dragon in our tradition is said to
have issued from a temple. We had no temples, the Greeks had.

"There are not many special traditions connected with Svendborg. There
is the story of a noble lady who was murdered at Svendborg, but the
murderers were men of rank, and the whole town agreed to pay
blood-money, and some farms were apportioned to the murdered woman's
relatives and a wooden cross set up over her grave; and it was agreed
that when the wooden cross fell into decay, whoever first repaired it
should possess the farm so apportioned. The consequence was that a
wooden cross was alw