bronze figures, scriptural and historical, rising up between the
gushing jets of water. A pretty servant-maid was just filling her
pails, and she gave Knud a refreshing draught; and as her hand was
full of roses, she gave him one of the flowers, and he accepted it as
a good omen.

From the neighbouring church the strains of the organ were sounding:
they seemed to him as familiar as the tones of the organ at home at
Kjoege; and he went into the great cathedral. The sunlight streamed in
through the stained glass windows, between the two lofty slender
pillars. His spirit became prayerful, and peace returned to his soul.

And he sought and found a good master in Nuremberg, with whom he
stayed, and in whose house he learned the German language.

The old moat round the town has been converted into a number of little
kitchen gardens; but the high walls are standing yet, with their heavy
towers. The ropemaker twists his ropes on a gallery or walk built of
wood, inside the town wall, where elder bushes grow out of the clefts
and cracks, spreading their green twigs over the little low houses
that stand below; and in one of these dwelt the master with whom Knud
worked; and over the little garret window at which Knud sat the elder
waved its branches.

Here he lived through a summer and a winter; but when the spring came
again he could bear it no longer. The elder was in blossom, and its
fragrance reminded him so of home, that he fancied himself back in the
garden at Kjoege; and therefore Knud went away from his master, and
dwelt with another, farther in the town, over whose house no elder
bush grew.

His workshop was quite close to one of the old stone bridges, by a low
water-mill, that rushed and foamed always. Without, rolled the roaring
stream, hemmed in by houses, whose old decayed gables looked ready to
topple down into the water. No elder grew here--there was not even a
flower-pot with its little green plant; but just opposite the workshop
stood a great old willow tree, that seemed to cling fast to the house,
for fear of being carried away by the water, and which stretched forth
its branches over the river, just as the willow at Kjoege spread its
arms across the streamlet by the gardens there.

Yes, he had certainly gone from the "Elder-mother" to the
"Willow-father." The tree here had something, especially on moonlight
evenings, that went straight to his heart--and that something was not
in the moonlight, but in the o