bottom of
her basket.'

'A book!' said I, 'how did you come by it?'

'We live near the sea,' said the old man; 'so near that sometimes our
thatch is wet with the spray; and it may now be a year ago that there was
a fearful storm, and a ship was driven ashore during the night, and ere
the morn was a complete wreck. When we got up at daylight, there were
the poor shivering crew at our door; they were foreigners, red-haired
men, whose speech we did not understand; but we took them in, and warmed
them, and they remained with us three days; and when they went away they
left behind them this thing, here it is, part of the contents of a box
which was washed ashore.'

'And did you learn who they were?'

'Why, yes; they made us understand that they were Danes.'

Danes! thought I, Danes! and instantaneously, huge and grisly, appeared
to rise up before my vision the skull of the old pirate Dane, even as I
had seen it of yore in the pent-house of the ancient church to which,
with my mother and my brother, I had wandered on the memorable summer
eve.

And now the old man handed me the book; a strange and uncouth-looking
volume enough. It was not very large, but instead of the usual covering
was bound in wood, and was compressed with strong iron clasps. It was a
printed book, but the pages were not of paper, but vellum, and the
characters were black, and resembled those generally termed Gothic.

'It is certainly a curious book,' said I; 'and I should like to have it,
but I can't think of taking it as a gift, I must give you an equivalent,
I never take presents from anybody.'

The old man whispered with his dame and chuckled, and then turned his
face to me, and said, with another chuckle, 'Well, we have agreed about
the price, but, maybe, you will not consent.'

'I don't know,' said I; 'what do you demand?'

'Why, that you shake me by the hand, and hold out your cheek to my old
dame, she has taken an affection to you.'

'I shall be very glad to shake you by the hand,' said I, 'but as for the
other condition, it requires consideration.'

'No consideration at all,' said the old man, with something like a sigh;
'she thinks you like her son, our only child, that was lost twenty years
ago in the waves of the North Sea.'

'Oh, that alters the case altogether,' said I, 'and of course I can have
no objection.'

And now at once I shook off my listlessness, to enable me to do which
nothing could have happened more opportune