e moon was full, but so
densely beclouded that only a pale hazy shimmer hovered over the night.

Behind Krarup Kro lay a peat moss, dark with black turf-stacks and
dangerous deep pits. And among the heathery mounds there wound a strip
of grass that looked like a path; but it was no path, for it stopped on
the very brink of a turf-pit that was larger than the others, and deeper
also.

In this grassy strip the fox lay and lurked, quite flat, and the hare
bounded lightly over the heather.

It was easy for the fox to calculate that the hare would not describe a
wide circle so late in the evening. It cautiously raised its pointed
nose and made an estimate; and as it sneaked back before the wind, to
find a good place from which it could see where the hare would finish
its circuit and lie down, it self-complacently thought that the foxes
were always getting wiser and wiser, and the hares more foolish than
ever.

In the inn they were unusually busy, for a couple of commercial
travellers had ordered roast hare; besides, the landlord was at an
auction in Thisted, and Madame had never been in the habit of seeing to
anything but the kitchen. But now it unfortunately chanced that the
lawyer wanted to get hold of the landlord, and, as he was not at home,
Madame had to receive a lengthy message and an extremely important
letter, which utterly bewildered her.

By the stove stood a strange man in oilskins, waiting for a bottle of
soda-water; two fish-buyers had three times demanded cognac for their
coffee; the stableman stood with an empty lantern waiting for a light,
and a tall, hard-featured countryman followed Karen anxiously with his
eyes; he had to get sixty-three oere change out of a krone. [Footnote:
A krone contains 100 oere, and is equal to 1 S. 1-1/2 d.]

But Karen went to and fro without hurrying herself, and without getting
confused. One could scarcely understand how she kept account of all
this. The large eyes and the wondering eyebrows were strained as if in
expectation. She held her fine little head erect and steady, as if not
to be distracted from all she had to think of. Her simple dress of blue
serge had become too tight for her, so that the collar cut slightly into
her neck, forming a little fold in the skin below the hair.

'These country girls are very white-skinned,' said one of the
fish-buyers to the other. They were young men, and talked about Karen as
connoisseurs.

At the window was a man who looked a