ld them that in the lifetime of his
father the horses had many a hard battle with the wild beasts that
were now exterminated. One morning, when he himself had gone out to
bring in the horses, he found one of them standing with its forefeet
on a wolf it had killed, but the savage animal had torn and
lacerated the brave horse's legs.

The journey over the heath and the deep sand was only too
quickly at an end. They stopped before the house of mourning, where
they found plenty of guests within and without. Waggon after waggon
stood side by side, while the horses and oxen had been turned out to
graze on the scanty pasture. Great sand-hills like those at home by
the North Sea rose behind the house and extended far and wide. How had
they come here, so many miles inland? They were as large and high as
those on the coast, and the wind had carried them there; there was
also a legend attached to them.

Psalms were sung, and a few of the old people shed tears; with
this exception, the guests were cheerful enough, it seemed to
Jurgen, and there was plenty to eat and drink. There were eels of
the fattest, requiring brandy to bury them, as the eel-breeder said;
and certainly they did not forget to carry out his maxim here.

Jurgen went in and out the house; and on the third day he felt
as much at home as he did in the fisherman's cottage among the
sand-hills, where he had passed his early days. Here on the heath were
riches unknown to him until now; for flowers, blackberries, and
bilberries were to be found in profusion, so large and sweet that when
they were crushed beneath the tread of passers-by the heather was
stained with their red juice. Here was a barrow and yonder another.
Then columns of smoke rose into the still air; it was a heath fire,
they told him--how brightly it blazed in the dark evening!

The fourth day came, and the funeral festivities were at an end;
they were to go back from the land-dunes to the sand-dunes.

"Ours are better," said the old fisherman, Jurgen's foster-father;
"these have no strength."

And they spoke of the way in which the sand-dunes had come inland,
and it seemed very easy to understand. This is how they explained it:

A dead body had been found on the coast, and the peasants buried
it in the churchyard. From that time the sand began to fly about and
the sea broke in with violence. A wise man in the district advised
them to open the grave and see if the buried man was not lying sucking