he arms
I cut off your skeletons. Clever idea, wasn't it? You know how grumpy
Soelling gets if anything interferes with his tutoring. You see, I'd
had the geese sent me, and I wanted you to all come with me to
Mathiesen's place. I knew you were going to read the osteology of the
arm, so I went up into Soelling's room, opened it with his own keys and
took the arms from his skeleton. I did the same here while you were
downstairs in the reading room. Have you been stupid enough to take
them down off their frames, and take away their tickets? I had marked
them so carefully, that each man should get his own again."

I dressed hastily and went out with Niels into the fresh, cool morning
air. A few minutes later we separated, and I turned toward the street
where Soelling lived. Without heeding the protest of his old landlady,
I entered the room where he still slept the sleep of the just. The
arm, still wrapped in newspaper, lay on his desk. I took it up, put
the mark piece in its place and hastened with all speed to the
churchyard.

How different it looked in the early dawn! The fog had risen and
shining frost pearls hung in the bare twigs of the tall trees where
the sparrows were already twittering their morning song. There was no
one to be seen. The churchyard lay quiet and peaceful. I stepped over
the heaps of bones to where the heavy oaken coffin lay under a tree.
Cautiously I pushed the arm back into its interior, and hammered the
rusty nails into their places again, just as the first rays of the
pale November sun touched a gleam of light from the metal plate on the
cover.--Then the weight was lifted from my soul.

OTTO LARSSEN

_THE MANUSCRIPT_

Two gentlemen sat chatting together one evening.

Their daily business was to occupy themselves with literature. At the
present moment they were engaged in drinking whisky,--an occupation
both agreeable and useful,--and in chatting about books, the theater,
women and many other things. Finally they came around to that
inexhaustible subject for conversation, the mysterious life of the
soul, the hidden things, the Unknown, that theme for which Shakespeare
has given us an oft-quoted and oft-abused device, which one of them,
Mr. X., now used to point his remarks. Raising his glass, he looked at
himself meditatively in a mirror opposite, and, in a good imitation of
the manner of his favourite actor, he quoted:

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are