with the promise that he would be back in two
weeks. But they were to be two long weeks. They did not hear of him
again for many moons, and then strange tidings came of his doings.
Single-handed he had bearded the Swedish lion, and downed it in a
fair fight--strangest of all, almost without bloodshed.

The winter storms blew hard, and it was Christmas eve when he made
land, but he came in time to receive, not one new heir, but twin
baby girls. Then there were six of them, counting Jens and his wife,
and a merry Christmas they all had together. On Twelfth Night the
little ones were christened, and then the trooper bethought himself
of his promise to get back soon. The storms had ceased, but worse
had befallen; the sea was frozen over as far as eye reached, and the
island was cut off from all communication with the outer world.
There was nothing for it but to wait. It proved the longest and
hardest winter any one then living could remember. Easter was at
hand before the ice broke up, and let a fishing smack slip over to
Ystad, on the mainland. It came back with news that set the whole
island wondering. Peace had been made, and Denmark had ceded all its
ancient provinces east of the Oeresund to Karl Gustav. Ystad itself
and Skaane, the province in which Jens Kofoed had been campaigning,
were Swedish now, and so was Bornholm. All unknown to its people,
the island had changed hands in the game of war overnight, as it
were. A Swedish garrison was coming over presently to take charge.

When Jens Kofoed heard it, he sat down and thought things over. If
there was peace, his old captain had no use for him, that was
certain; but there might be need of him at home. What would happen
there, no one could tell. And there were the wife and children to
take care of. The upshot of it all was that he stayed. Only, to be
on the safe side, he got the Burgomaster and the Aldermen in his
home town, Hasle, to set it down in writing that he could not have
got back to his troop for all he might have tried. Kofoed, it will
be seen, was a man with a head on his shoulders, which was well, for
presently he had need of it.

There were no Danish soldiers in the island, only a peasant militia,
ill-armed and untaught in the ways of war; so no one thought of
resisting the change of masters. The people simply waited to see
what would happen. Along in May a company of one hundred and twenty
men with four guns landed, and took possession of Castle
Hamm