a bush was to be seen;
not a single flower had been planted there, nor had a wreath been laid
upon the graves. Rough mounds show where the dead had been buried, and
rank grass, tossed by the wind, grows thickly over the whole
churchyard. Here and there a grave had a monument to show, in the
shape of a half-decayed block of wood rudely shaped into the form of a
coffin, the said block having been brought from the forest of West
Jutland; but the forest of West Jutland is the wild sea itself, where
the inhabitants find the hewn beams and planks and fragments which the
breakers cast ashore. The wind and the sea fog soon destroy the wood.
One of these blocks had been placed by loving hands on a child's
grave, and one of the women, who had come out of the church, stepped
towards it. She stood still in front of it, and let her glance rest on
the discoloured memorial. A few moments afterwards her husband stepped
up to her. Neither of them spoke a word, but he took her hand, and
they wandered across the brown heath, over moor and meadow, towards
the sand-hills; for a long time they thus walked silently side by
side.

"That was a good sermon to-day," the man said at length. "If we had
not God to look to, we should have nothing!"

"Yes," observed the woman, "He sends joy and sorrow, and He has a
right to send them. To-morrow our little boy would have been five
years old, if we had been allowed to keep him."

"You will gain nothing by fretting, wife," said the man. "The boy is
well provided for. He is there whither we pray to go."

And they said nothing more, but went forward to their house among the
sand-hills. Suddenly, in front of one of the houses where the sea
grass did not keep the sand down with its twining roots, there arose
what appeared to be a column of smoke rising into the air. A gust of
wind swept in among the hills, whirling the particles of sand high in
the air. Another, and the strings of fish hung up to dry flapped and
beat violently against the wall of the hut; and then all was still
again, and the sun shone down hotly.

Man and wife stepped into the house. They had soon taken off their
Sunday clothes, and emerging again, they hurried away over the dunes,
which stood there like huge waves of sand suddenly arrested in their
course, while the sandweeds and the dunegrass with its bluish stalks
spread a changing colour over them. A few neighbours came up, and
helped one another to draw the boats higher up on the