nd soon
the railway will come with its train of carriages, and rush over the
graves which are forgotten like the names--hu-ush! passed away, passed
away!

"That is the story of Waldemar Daa and his daughters. Tell it better,
any of you, if you know how," said the Wind, and turned away--and he
was gone.

IB AND CHRISTINE.

Not far from the clear stream Gudenau, in North Jutland, in the forest
which extends by its banks and far into the country, a great ridge of
land rises and stretches along like a wall through the wood. By this
ridge, westward, stands a farmhouse, surrounded by poor land; the
sandy soil is seen through the spare rye and wheat-ears that grow upon
it. Some years have elapsed since the time of which we speak. The
people who lived here cultivated the fields, and moreover kept three
sheep, a pig, and two oxen; in fact, they supported themselves quite
comfortably, for they had enough to live on if they took things as
they came. Indeed, they could have managed to save enough to keep two
horses; but, like the other peasants of the neighbourhood, they said,
"The horse eats itself up"--that is to say, it eats as much as it
earns. Jeppe-Jaens cultivated his field in summer. In the winter he
made wooden shoes, and then he had an assistant, a journeyman, who
understood as well as he himself did how to make the wooden shoes
strong, and light, and graceful. They carved shoes and spoons, and
that brought in money. It would have been wronging the Jeppe-Jaenses to
call them poor people.

Little Ib, a boy seven years old, the only child of the family, would
sit by, looking at the workmen, cutting at a stick, and occasionally
cutting his finger. But one day Ib succeeded so well with two pieces
of wood, that they really looked like little wooden shoes; and these
he wanted to give to little Christine. And who was little Christine?
She was the boatman's daughter, and was graceful and delicate as a
gentleman's child; had she been differently dressed, no one would have
imagined that she came out of the hut on the neighbouring heath. There
lived her father, who was a widower, and supported himself by carrying
firewood in his great boat out of the forest to the estate of
Silkeborg, with its great eel-pond and eel-weir, and sometimes even to
the distant little town of Randers. He had no one who could take care
of little Christine, and therefore the child was almost always with
him in his boat, or in the forest among