the heath plants and barberry
bushes. Sometimes, when he had to go as far as the town, he would
bring little Christine, who was a year younger than Ib, to stay at the
Jeppe-Jaenses.

Ib and Christine agreed very well in every particular: they divided
their bread and berries when they were hungry, they dug in the ground
together for treasures, and they ran, and crept, and played about
everywhere. And one day they ventured together up the high ridge, and
a long way into the forest; once they found a few snipes' eggs there,
and that was a great event for them.

Ib had never been on the heath where Christine's father lived, nor had
he ever been on the river. But even this was to happen; for
Christine's father once invited him to go with them; and on the
evening before the excursion, he followed the boatman over the heath
to the house of the latter.

Next morning early, the two children were sitting high up on the pile
of firewood in the boat, eating bread and whistleberries. Christine's
father and his assistant propelled the boat with staves. They had the
current with them, and swiftly they glided down the stream, through
the lakes it forms in its course, and which sometimes seemed shut in
by reeds and water plants, though there was always room for them to
pass, and though the old trees bent quite forward over the water, and
the old oaks bent down their bare branches, as if they had turned up
their sleeves and wanted to show their knotty naked arms. Old alder
trees, which the stream had washed away from the bank, clung with
their fibrous roots to the bottom of the stream, and looked like
little wooded islands. The water-lilies rocked themselves on the
river. It was a splendid excursion; and at last they came to the great
eel-weir, where the water rushed through the flood-gates; and Ib and
Christine thought this was beautiful to behold.

In those days there was no manufactory there, nor was there any town;
only the old great farmyard, with its scanty fields, with few
servants and a few head of cattle, could be seen there; and the
rushing of the water through the weir and the cry of the wild ducks
were the only signs of life in Silkeborg. After the firewood had been
unloaded, the father of Christine bought a whole bundle of eels and a
slaughtered sucking-pig, and all was put into a basket and placed in
the stern of the boat. Then they went back again up the stream; but
the wind was favourable, and when the sails were hoi