n the ruts were
blue with chickory. On the right, over the cornfields, lay the Baltic. I
could still see Arkona in front of me on the dim edge of the world. Down
at our feet stretched the calm silver of the Jasmunder Bodden, the
biggest of those inland seas that hollow out the island into a mere
frame; and a tongue of pine-forest, black and narrow, curved northwards
between its pale waters and the vigorous blue of the sea. I stopped the
carriage as I love to do in lonely places, and there was no sound but a
faint whispering in the corn.

We drove down over stones between grassy banks to a tiny village with a
very ancient church and the pleasing name of Bobbin. I looked wistfully
up at the church on its mound as we passed below it. It was very
old--six centuries the guide-book said--and fain would I have gone into
it; but I knew it would be locked, and did not like to disturb the
parson for the key. The parson himself came along the road at that
moment, and he looked so kind, and his eye was so mild that I got out
and inquired of him with what I hope was an engaging modesty whether the
guide-book were correct about the six centuries. He was amiability
itself. Not only, he said, was the church ancient, but interesting.
Would I like to see it? 'Oh please.' Then would I come to the parsonage
while he got the key? 'Oh thank you.'

The Bobbin parsonage is a delightful little house of the kind that I
dream of for my declining years, with latticed windows and a vine. It
stands in a garden so pretty, so full of narrow paths disappearing round
corners, that I longed far more to be shown where they led to than to be
shown the inside of the church. Several times I said things that ought
to have resulted in my being taken along them, but the parson heeded
not; his talk was and remained wholly church. A friendly dog lay among
croquet hoops on the lawn, a pleasant, silent dog, who wagged his tail
when I came round the corner and saw no reason why he should bark and
sniff. No one else was to be seen. The house was so quiet it seemed
asleep while I waited in the parlour. The parson took me down a little
path to the church, talking amiably on the way. He was proud, he said,
of his church, very proud on week-days; on Sundays so few people came to
the services that his pride was quenched by the aspect of the empty
seats. A bell began to toll as we reached the door. In answer to my
inquiring look he said it was the _Gebetglocke_, the praye