a childless old man. Children were
passing through the streets in a procession, with lights and waving
banners. How much of his enormous wealth would he not have given to
possess one child--to have had spared to him his daughter and her
little one, who perhaps never beheld the light of day in this world.
If so, how would it behold the light of eternity--of paradise? "Poor,
poor child!"

Yes; poor child--nothing but a child--and yet in his thirtieth year!
for to such an age had Joergen attained there in Gammel-Skagen.

The sand-drifts had found their way even over the graves in the
churchyard, and up to the very walls of the church itself; yet here,
amidst those who had gone before them--amidst relatives and
friends--the dead were still buried. The good old Broenne and his wife
reposed there, near their daughter, under the white sand.

It was late in the year--the time of storms; the sand-hills smoked,
the waves rolled mountains high on the raging sea; the birds in hosts,
like dark tempestuous clouds, passed screeching over the sand-hills;
ship after ship went ashore on the terrible reefs between Skagen's
Green and Huusby-Klitter.

One afternoon Joergen was sitting alone in the parlour, and suddenly
there rushed upon his shattered mind a feeling akin to the
restlessness which so often, in his younger years, had driven him out
among the sand-hills, or upon the heath.

"Home! home!" he exclaimed. No one heard him. He left the house, and
took his way to the sand-hills. The sand and the small stones dashed
against his face, and whirled around him. He went towards the church;
the sand was lying banked up against the walls, and half way up the
windows; but the walk up to the church was freer of it. The church
door was not locked, it opened easily, and Joergen entered the sacred
edifice.

The wind went howling over the town of Skagen; it was blowing a
perfect hurricane, such as had not been known in the memory of the
oldest man living--it was most fearful weather. But Joergen was in
God's house, and while dark night came on around him, all seemed light
within; it was the light of the immortal soul which is never to be
extinguished. He felt as if a heavy stone had fallen from his head; he
fancied that he heard the organ playing, but the sounds were those of
the storm and the roaring sea. He placed himself in one of the pews,
and he fancied that the candles were lighted one after the other,
until there was a blaze of bril