d as if the eyes of the stranger attracted and conquered
him. "After my grandfather," he now said with a clear voice.

"My boy--your mother used to look at me just so,--I am your
grandfather--" and now big tears ran down the austere gentleman's
cheeks. Erick must have been seized by the attraction of kinship, for
without the least shyness, he threw both arms around the old gentleman's
neck and rejoicingly exclaimed: "Oh, Grandfather, is it really you? I
know you well! And I have so much to tell you from Mother, so much."

[Illustration: _He threw both arms around the old gentleman's neck and
rejoicingly exclaimed: "Oh, Grandfather, is it really you?"..._]

"Have you? Have you, my boy?" But the grandfather could say no more.

When Erick noticed that his grandfather kept on wiping away the tears,
then sad thoughts gained the upper hand in him and all at once the
rejoicing expression disappeared, and he said quite sadly: "Oh,
Grandfather, I was not to come to you now, and not for a long time. Only
when I had become an honorable man, was I to step before you and say to
you: 'My mother sends me to you, that you may be proud of me, and that I
may make good the sorrow, which my mother has caused you.'"

The grandfather put his arms lovingly around Erick and said: "Now
everything is all right. It is enough that your mother has sent you to
me. She meant it well with the 'honorable man', in this I recognize my
child; and you do not disobey her, my boy, for you see, you did not come
to me, but I came to you. And an honorable man you will also become with
me."

"Yes, that I will, and I know too, how one becomes one, for the reverend
pastor has told me how."

"That is lovely of him, we will thank him for it. And now we start, this
very day, on our journey to Denmark."

"To Denmark, Grandfather, to the beautiful estate, right now?" Erick's
eyes grew larger and larger with astonishment and expectation, for he
only now comprehended, what he was going to meet: all that had stood
before his mental eyes as the highest and most splendid, ever since he
could think, and that his mother had painted for him in the bright
coloring of her childhood's remembrances, again and again, the distant,
beautiful estate, the handsome horses, the pond with the barge, the
large house with the winter-garden,--everything he was now to see, and
live there with this grandfather, for whom his mother had planted such a
love and reverence in her boy's