IB AND CHRISTINE. 453

there as a bird-glass, and heard the murmuring and noise of the
people in the street *below, and also the words of the old maid in
the room within. An old friend has just come to visit her, and
they talked—not about the Bottle-neck, but about the myrtle in
the window.

“ No, you certainly must not spend a dollar for your daughter’s
bridal wreath,” said the old maid. ‘You shall have a beautiful
little nosegay from me, full of blossoms. Do you see how splen-
didly that tree has core on? yes, that has been raised from a
spray of the myrtle you gave me on the day after my betrothal,
and from which I was to have made my own wreath when the
year was past; but that day never came! The eyes closed that’
were to have been my joy and delight through life. Inthe depths
of the sea he sleeps sweetly, my dear one! The myrtle has be-
come an old tree, and I become a yet older woman; and when
it faded at last, I took the last green shoot, and planted it in the
ground, and it has become a great tree; and now at length the
myrtle will serve at the wedding—as a wreath for your daughter.”

There were tears in the eyes of the old maid. She spoke of
the beloved of her youth, of their betrothal in the wood; many
thoughts came to her, but the thought never came, that quite
close to her, before the very window, was a remembrance of those
times—the neck of the bottle which had shouted for joy when the
cork flew out with a bang on the betrothal day. But the Bottle-
neck did not recognize her, for he was not listening to what
a old maid said—and still that was because he was thinking
of her.

IB AND CHRISTINE.

OT far from the clear stream Gudenau, in North Jutland,
in the forest which extends by its banks and far into
the country, a great ridge of land rises and stretches

along like a wall through the wood. By this ridge, westward,

stands a farm-house, surrounded by poor land; the sandy soil is
seen through the spare rye and wheat-ears that grow upon it.

Some years have elapsed since the time of. which we speak. The

people who lived here cultivated the fields, and moreover kept

three sheep, a pig, and two oxen; in fact, they supported them-
selves quite comfortably, for they had enough to live on if they
took things as they came. Indeed, they could have managed to
save enough to keep two horses; but, like the other peasants of
the neighbourhood, they said, “ The horse eats itself up ”—that