of loving kindness--who can doubt it?

In Spain, where balmy breezes blow over the Moorish cupolas and
gently stir the orange and myrtle groves, where singing and the
sound of the castanets are always heard, the richest merchant in the
place, a childless old man, sat in a luxurious house, while children
marched in procession through the streets with waving flags and
lighted tapers. If he had been able to press his children to his
heart, his daughter, or her child, that had, perhaps never seen the
light of day, far less the kingdom of heaven, how much of his wealth
would he not have given! "Poor child!" Yes, poor child--a child still,
yet more than thirty years old, for Jurgen had arrived at this age
in Old Skjagen.

The shifting sands had covered the graves in the courtyard,
quite up to the church walls, but still, the dead must be buried among
their relatives and the dear ones who had gone before them. Merchant
Bronne and his wife now rested with their children under the white
sand.

It was in the spring--the season of storms. The sand from the
dunes was whirled up in clouds; the sea was rough, and flocks of birds
flew like clouds in the storm, screaming across the sand-hills.
Shipwreck followed upon shipwreck on the reefs between Old Skagen
and the Hunsby dunes.

One evening Jurgen sat in his room alone: all at once his mind
seemed to become clearer, and a restless feeling came over him, such
as had often, in his younger days, driven him out to wander over the
sand-hills or on the heath. "Home, home!" he cried. No one heard
him. He went out and walked towards the dunes. Sand and stones blew
into his face, and whirled round him; he went in the direction of
the church. The sand was banked up the walls, half covering the
windows, but it had been cleared away in front of the door, and the
entrance was free and easy to open, so Jurgen went into the church.

The storm raged over the town of Skjagen; there had not been
such a terrible tempest within the memory of the inhabitants, nor such
a rough sea. But Jurgen was in the temple of God, and while the
darkness of night reigned outside, a light arose in his soul that
was never to depart from it; the heavy weight that pressed on his
brain burst asunder. He fancied he heard the organ, but it was only
the storm and the moaning of the sea. He sat down on one of the seats,
and lo! the candies were lighted one by one, and there was
brightness and grandeur such as he had only