de it; and the cock is scraping away the earth for the
hens, look, how he struts! And now we are close to the church. It lies
high upon the hill, between the large oak-trees, one of which is half
decayed. And now we are by the smithy, where the fire is blazing, and
where the half-naked men are banging with their hammers till the sparks
fly about. Away! away! To the beautiful country-seat!"

And all that the little maiden, who sat behind on the stick, spoke of,
flew by in reality. The boy saw it all, and yet they were only going
round the grass-plot. Then they played in a side avenue, and marked out
a little garden on the earth; and they took Elder-blossoms from their
hair, planted them, and they grew just like those the old people planted
when they were children, as related before. They went hand in hand, as
the old people had done when they were children; but not to the Round
Tower, or to Friedericksberg; no, the little damsel wound her arms round
the boy, and then they flew far away through all Denmark. And spring
came, and summer; and then it was autumn, and then winter; and a
thousand pictures were reflected in the eye and in the heart of the boy;
and the little girl always sang to him, "This you will never forget."
And during their whole flight the Elder Tree smelt so sweet and odorous;
he remarked the roses and the fresh beeches, but the Elder Tree had
a more wondrous fragrance, for its flowers hung on the breast of the
little maiden; and there, too, did he often lay his head during the
flight.

"It is lovely here in spring!" said the young maiden. And they stood in
a beech-wood that had just put on its first green, where the woodroof [*]
at their feet sent forth its fragrance, and the pale-red anemony looked
so pretty among the verdure. "Oh, would it were always spring in the
sweetly-smelling Danish beech-forests!"

* Asperula odorata.

"It is lovely here in summer!" said she. And she flew past old castles
of by-gone days of chivalry, where the red walls and the embattled
gables were mirrored in the canal, where the swans were swimming, and
peered up into the old cool avenues. In the fields the corn was waving
like the sea; in the ditches red and yellow flowers were growing; while
wild-drone flowers, and blooming convolvuluses were creeping in the
hedges; and towards evening the moon rose round and large, and the
haycocks in the meadows smelt so sweetly. "This one never forgets!"

"It is lovely here in