"Ours are better,"

From Norre-Vosborg, where the juniper blossomed, the journey

became more pleasant, for they met some other people who were also

going to the funeral and were riding in waggons. Our travellers had to

sit all together on a little box at the back of the waggon, but even

this, they thought, was better than walking. So they continued their

journey across the rugged heath. The oxen which drew the waggon

stopped every now and then, where a patch of fresh grass appeared amid

the heather. The sun shone with considerable heat, and it was

wonderful to behold how in the far distance something like smoke

seemed to be rising; yet this smoke was clearer than the air; it was

transparent, and looked like rays of light rolling and dancing afar

over the heath.

    "That is Lokeman driving his sheep," said some one.

    And this was enough to excite Jurgen's imagination. He felt as

if they were now about to enter fairyland, though everything was still

real. How quiet it was! The heath stretched far and wide around them

like a beautiful carpet. The heather was in blossom, and the

juniper-bushes and fresh oak saplings rose like bouquets from the

earth. An inviting place for a frolic, if it had not been for the

number of poisonous adders of which the travellers spoke; they also

mentioned that the place had formerly been infested with wolves, and

that the district was still called Wolfsborg for this reason. The

old man who was driving the oxen told them that in the lifetime of his

father the horses had many a hard battle with the wild beasts that

were now exterminated. One morning, when he himself had gone out to

bring in the horses, he found one of them standing with its forefeet

on a wolf it had killed, but the savage animal had torn and

lacerated the brave horse's legs.

    The journey over the heath and the deep sand was only too

quickly at an end. They stopped before the house of mourning, where

they found plenty of guests within and without. Waggon after waggon

stood side by side, while the horses and oxen had been turned out to

graze on the scanty pasture. Great sand-hills like those at home by

the North Sea rose behind the house and extended far and wide. How had

they come here, so many miles inland? They were as large and high as

those on the coast, and the wind had carried them there; there was

also a legend attached to them.

    Psalms were sung, and a few of the old people shed tears; with

this exception, the guests were cheerful enough, it seemed to

Jurgen, and there was plenty to eat and drink. There were eels of

the fattest, requiring brandy to bury them, as the eel-breeder said;

and certainly they did not forget to carry out his maxim here.

    Jurgen went in and out the house; and on the third day he felt

as much at home as he did in the fisherman's cottage among the

sand-hills, where he had passed his early days. Here on the heath were

riches unknown to him until now; for flowers, blackberries, and

bilberries were to be found in profusion, so large and sweet that when

they were crushed beneath the tread of passers-by the heather was

stained with their red juice. Here was a barrow and yonder another.

Then columns of smoke rose into the still air; it was a heath fire,

they told him- how brightly it blazed in the dark evening!

    The fourth day came, and the funeral festivities were at an end;

they were to go back from the land-dunes to the sand-dunes.

    "Ours are better," said the old fisherman, Jurgen's foster-father;

"these have no strength."