The Sand-Hills of Jutland. H. C. Andersen

Jörgen, with his foster-father and mother, had passed on their way to the funeral meeting, at which had been spent the four brightest and pleasantest days of his childhood. He was conveyed again the same way by the fields up to Nörre-Vosborg, and yonder stood in full flower the elder tree, and yonder the lindens shed their sweet perfume around; and he felt as if it had been only yesterday that he had been there.

      In the west wing of the castle is a subterranean passage under the high stairs; this leads to a low, vaulted cell, in which Lange Margrethe had been imprisoned, and whence she had been taken to the place of execution. She had eaten the hearts of five children, and believed that, could she have added two more to the number, she would have been able to fly and to render herself invisible. In the wall there was a small, narrow air-hole. No glass was in this rude window; yet the sweetly-scented linden tree on the outside could not send the slightest portion of its refreshing perfume into that close, mouldy dungeon. There was only a miserable pallet there; but a good conscience is a good pillow, therefore Jörgen could sleep soundly.

      The thick wooden door was locked, and it was further secured by an iron bolt; but the nightmare of superstition can creep through a key-hole in the baronial castle as in the fisherman's hut. It stole in where Jörgen was sitting and thinking upon Lange Margrethe and her misdeeds. Her last thoughts had filled that little room the night before her execution; he remembered all the magic that, in the olden times, was practised when the lord of the manor, Svanwedel, lived there; and it was well known how, even now, the chained dog that stood on the bridge was found every morning hung over the railing in his chain. All these tales recurred to Jörgen's mind, and made him shiver; and there was but one sun ray which shone upon him, and that was the recollection of the blooming elder and linden trees.

      He would not be kept long here; he would be removed to Ringkjöbing, where the prison was equally strong.

      These times were not like ours. It went hard with the poor then; for then it had not come to pass that peasants found their way up to lordly mansions, and that from these regiments coachmen and other servants became judges in the petty courts, which were invested with the power to condemn, for perhaps a trifling fault, the poor man to be deprived of all his goods and chattels, or to be flogged at the whipping-post. A few of these courts still remain; and in Jutland, far from "the King's Copenhagen," and the enlightened and liberal government, even now the law is not always very wisely administered: it certainly was not so in the case of poor Jörgen.

      It was bitterly cold in the place where he was confined. When was this imprisonment to be at an end? Though innocent, he had been cast into wretchedness and solitude—that was his fate. How things had been ordained for him in this world, he had now time to think over. Why had he been thus treated—his portion made so hard to bear? Well, this would be revealed "in that other life" which assuredly awaits all. In the humble cottage that belief had been engrafted into him, which, amidst the grandeur and brightness of his Spanish home, had never shone upon his father's heart: that now, in the midst of cold and darkness, became his consolation, God's gift of grace, which never can deceive.

      The storms of spring were now raging; the roaring of the German Ocean was heard far inland; but just when the tempest had lulled, it sounded as if hundreds of heavy wagons were driving over a hard tunnelled road. Jörgen heard it even in his dungeon, and it was a change in the monotony of his existence. No old melody could have gone more deeply to his heart than these sounds—the rolling ocean—the free ocean—on which one can be borne throughout the world, fly with the wind, and wherever one went have one's own house with one, as the snail has his—to stand always upon home's ground, even in a foreign land.

      How eagerly he listened to the deep rolling! How remembrances hurried through his mind! "Free—free—how delightful to be free, even without soles to one's shoes, and in a coarse patched garment!" The very idea brought the warm blood rushing into his cheeks, and he struck the wall with his fist in his vain impatience. Weeks, months, a whole year had elapsed, when a gipsy named Niels Tyv—"the horse-dealer," as he was also called—was arrested, and then came better times: it was ascertained what injustice had been done to Jörgen.

      To the north of Ringkjöbing Fiord, at a small country inn, on the evening of the day previous to Jörgen's leaving home, and the committal of the murder, Niels Tyv and Morten had met each other. They drank a little together, not enough certainly to get into any man's head, but enough to set Morten talking too freely. He went on chattering, as he was fond of doing, and he mentioned that he had bought a house and some ground, and was going to be married. Niels thereupon asked him where was the money which was to pay it, and Morten struck his pocket pompously, exclaiming in a vaunting manner—

      "Here, where it should be!"

      That foolish bragging answer cost him his life; for when he left the little inn Niels followed him, and stabbed him in the neck with his knife, in order to rob him of the money, which, after all, was not to be found.

      There was a long trial and much deliberation: it is enough for us to know that Jörgen was set free at last. But what compensation was made to him for all he had suffered that long weary year in a cold, gloomy prison; secluded from all mankind? Why, he was assured that it was fortunate he was innocent, and he might now go about his business! The burgomaster gave him ten marks for his travelling expenses, and several of the townspeople gave him ale and food. They were very good people. Not all, then, would "skin you, and lay you on the frying-pan!" But the best of all was that the trader Brönne from Skagen, he to whom, a year before, Jörgen intended to have hired himself, was just at the time of his liberation on business at Ringkjöbing. He heard the whole story; he had a heart and understanding; and, knowing what Jörgen must have suffered and felt, he was determined to do what he could to improve his situation, and let him see that there were some kind-hearted people in the world.

      From a jail to freedom—from solitude and misery to a home which, by comparison, might be called a heaven—to kindness and love, he now passed. This also was to be a trial of his character. No chalice of life is altogether wormwood. A good person would not fill such for a child: would, then, the Almighty Father, who is all love, do so?

      "Let all that has taken place be now buried and forgotten," said the worthy Mr. Brönne. "We shall draw a thick line over last year. We shall burn the almanac. In two days we shall start for that blessed, peaceful, pleasant Skagen. It is said to be only a little insignificant nook in the country; but a nice warm nook it is, with windows open to the wide world."

      That was a journey—that was to breathe the fresh air again—to come from the cold, damp prison-cell out into the warm sunshine!

      The heather was blooming on the moorlands; the shepherd boys sat on the tumuli and played their flutes, which were manufactured out of the bones of sheep; the Fata Morgana, the beautiful mirage of the desert, with its hanging seas and undulating woods, showed itself; and that bright, wonderful phenomenon in the air, which is called the "Lokéman driving his sheep."

      Towards Limfiorden they passed over the Vandal's land; and towards Skagen they journeyed where the men with the long beards, Langbarderne,[1] came from. In that locality it was that, during the famine under King Snio, all old people and young children were ordered to be put to death; but the noble lady, Gambaruk, who was the heiress of that part of the country, insisted that the children should rather be sent out of the country. Jörgen was learned enough to know all about this; and, though he was not acquainted with the Langobarders' country beyond the lofty Alps, he had a good idea what it must be, as he had himself, when a boy, been in the south of Europe, in Spain. Well did he remember the heaped-up piles of fruit, the red pomegranate flowers, the din, the clamour, the tolling of bells in the Spanish city's great hive; but all was more charming at home, and Denmark was Jörgen's home.