ing for a third;
and near the sea there is plenty of fish to be found. The little
stranger was named Joergen.

"He is surely a Jewish child," said some people, "he has so dark a
complexion."

"He may, however, be an Italian or a Spaniard," said the priest.

The whole tribe of fishermen and women comforted themselves that,
whatever was his origin, the child had received Christian baptism. The
boy throve, his noble blood mantled in his cheek, and he grew strong,
notwithstanding poor living. The Danish language, as it is spoken in
West Jutland, became his mother tongue. The pomegranate seed from the
Spanish soil became the coarse grass on the west coast of Jutland.
Such are the vicissitudes of life!

To that home he attached himself with his young life's roots. Hunger
and cold, the poor man's toil and want, he was to experience, but also
the poor man's joys.

Childhood has its bright periods, which shine in recollection through
the whole of after life. How much had he not to amuse him, and to
play with! The entire seashore, for miles in length, was covered with
playthings for him--a mosaic of pebbles red as coral, yellow as amber,
and pure white, round as birds' eggs, all smoothed and polished by the
sea. Even the scales of the dried fish, the aquatic plants dried by
the wind, the shining seaweed fluttering among the rocks--all were
pleasant to his eye, and matter for his thoughts; and the boy was an
excitable, clever child. Much genius and great abilities lay dormant
in him. How well he remembered all the stories and old ballads he
heard; and he was very quick with his fingers. With stones and shells
he would plan out whole scenes he had heard as if in a picture: one
might have ornamented a room with these handiworks of his. "He could
cut out his thoughts with a stick," said his foster-mother; and yet he
was but a little boy. His voice was very sweet--melody seemed to have
been born with him. There were many finely-toned strings in that
breast; they might have sounded forth in the world, had his lot been
otherwise cast than in a fisherman's house on the shores of the German
Ocean.

One day a ship foundered near. A case was thrown up on the land
containing a number of flower-bulbs. Some took them and put them into
their cooking pots, thinking they were to be eaten; others were left
to rot upon the sand; none of them fulfilled their destination--to
unfold the lovely colours, the beauty that lay in them. Would it be