Lombards). A story is told that in the days of King Snio, all the children and the old people were in danger of being killed, and a noble lady, named Gambaruk, advised the young people to emigrate. Jurgen had heard this story; and although he had never seen the land of the Lombards, he yet had an idea that it was somewhere beyond the Alps, not so very far from Spain, in the south, which he had visited in his boyhood. He thought of the piles of southern fruit; the red blossoms of the pomegranate; of the humming, murmuring, and toiling in the great beehive of a city which he had seen; but how beautiful is that land in which is home! And Jurgen’s home was Denmark.
At length they arrived at Wendelskajn, as Skjagen is called in the Old Norwegian and Icelandic writings. At that time, old Skjagen, including the eastern and western towns, extended for miles, with its sand-hills and arable land, as far as the lighthouse near the Skjagenzweigs. Then, as now, the houses were scattered about among the waving, shifting sand-hills,—a kind of desert, where the wind sported with the sand, and where voices of the sea-gull and the cry of the wild swan strike harshly upon the ear. In the south-west, about a mile from the sea, lies old Skjagen; and here dwelt merchant Bronne, and here was Jurgen to live in future. The dwelling- house was tarred; the small outbuildings had each an overturned boat for a roof: even the pigsty had been put together with pieces of wreck. There was no fence; for here, indeed, was nothing to fence in but long rows of fishes, hung upon lines, one above the other, to dry in the wind. The coast was littered with stale herrings; for those fish were so plentiful that a net was scarcely thrown into the sea before it was filled. They were caught by cartloads, and many of them were often thrown back into the sea, or left to lie on the shore. The old man’s wife and daughter, and even the servants, came to meet him with great rejoicing. There was a great squeezing of hands, talking, and questioning. And the daughter, what a dear face, and what lovely eyes she had! The interior of the house was comfortable and roomy. Fritters that a king would have considered a dainty dish were placed on the table, and there was wine from the vintage of Skjagen; that is, the sea, which brought the grapes to its shores, ready pressed and prepared, in barrels and in bottles.
When the mother and daughter heard who Jurgen was, and how innocently he had suffered, they looked at him in a still more friendly manner; and the eyes of the charming Clara had a look of great interest, as she listened to his story. Jurgen found a happy home at Skjagen. It did his heart good, for it had been sorely tried. He had drunk the bitter dregs in the cup of affliction, which sometimes harden and sometimes soften the heart. Jurgen’s heart was still soft; it was young, and had yet room in it. It was all the better for him, therefore, that in three weeks Miss Clara was going away in one of her father’s ships to Christiansand, in Norway, to visit an aunt, and to stay the whole winter. On the Sunday before her departure, they all went to the church, which stood at a short distance from the town. It had been built centuries before, by Scotchmen and Dutchmen. At that time it was large and handsome, but was now in rather a ruinous condition.
