as very tall with
a big, strong body, and when he struck, he struck hard. He was a
dauntless sailor who knew as much about sailing a ship as any one of
his captains, and much more about building it. Danger appealed to
him always. When the spire on the great cathedral in Copenhagen
threatened to fall, he was the one who went up in it alone and gave
orders where and how to brace it.

As he grew, he sat in the council of state, learning kingcraft, and
showed there the hard-headed sense of fairness and justice that went
with him through life. He was hardly fourteen when the case of three
brothers of the powerful Friis family came before the council. They
had attacked another young nobleman in the street, struck off one of
his hands, and crippled the other. Because of their influence, the
council was for being lenient, atrocious as the crime was. A fine
was deemed sufficient. The young prince asked if there were not some
law covering the case with severer punishment, and was told that in
the province of Skaane there was such a law that applied to serfs.
But the assault had not been committed in Skaane, and these were
high noblemen.

"All the worse for them," said the prince. "Is then a serf in Skaane
to have more rights under the law than a nobleman in the rest of
Denmark? Let the law for the serf be theirs." And the judgment
stood.

He had barely attained his majority, when the young king was called
upon to judge between another great noble and a widow whom he sued
for 9000 daler, money he claimed to have lent to her husband. In
proof he laid before the judges two bonds bearing the signatures of
husband and wife. The widow denounced them as forgeries, but the
court decided that she must pay. She went straight to the King with
her story, assuring him that she had never heard of the debt. The
King sent for the bonds and upon close scrutiny discovered that one
of them was on paper bearing the water-mark of a mill that was not
built till two years after the date written in the bond. The noble
was arrested and the search of his house brought to light several
similar documents waiting their turn. He went to the scaffold. His
rank only aggravated his offence in the eyes of the King. No wonder
the fame of this judge spread quickly through the land.

A dozen contented years he reigned in peace, doing justice between
man and man at home. Then the curse of his house gripped him. In two
centuries, since the brief union between th