I started early in the morning with the two ladies in a closed carriage. It was more than a trifle cold at first, and my woollen rug came in very handy; I used it alternately to put over my knees and wrap round my shoulders.

We drove the way I had walked up with Falkenberg, and I recognized place after place as we passed. There and there he had tuned the pianos; there we had heard the grey goose passing. . . . The sun came up, and it grew warmer; the hours went by; then, coming to cross-roads, the ladies knocked at the window and said it was dinner-time.

I could see by the sun it was too early for the ladies’ dinner-time, though well enough for me, seeing I took my dinner with Falkenberg at noon. So I drove on.

“Can’t you stop?” they cried.

“I thought . . . you don’t generally have dinner till three. . . . ”

“But we’re hungry.”

I turned off aside from the road, took out the horses, and fed and watered them. Had these strange beings set their dinner-time by mine? “V?rsaagod!”

But I felt I could not well sit down to eat with them, so I remained standing by the horses.

“Well?” said Fruen.

“Thank you kindly,” said I, and waited to be served. They helped me, both of them, as if they could never give me enough. I drew the corks of the beer bottles, and was given a liberal share here as well; it was a picnic by the roadside — a little wayfaring adventure in my life. And Fruen I dared look at least, for fear she should be hurt.

And they talked and jested with each other, and now and again with me, out of their kindliness, that I might feel at ease. Said Fr?ken Elisabeth:

“Oh, I think it’s just lovely to have meals out of doors. Don’t you?”

And here she said De, instead of Du, as she had said before.

“It’s not so new to him, you know,” said Fruen; “he has his dinner out in the woods every day.”

Eh, but that voice of hers, and her eyes, and the womanly, tender look of the hand that held the glass towards me. . . . I might have said something in turn — have told them this or that of strange things from out in the wide world, for their amusement; I could have set those ladies right when they chattered on, all ignorant of the way of riding camels or of harvest in the vineyards. . . .

I made haste to finish my meal, and moved away. I took the buckets and went down for more water for the horses, though there was no need. I sat down by the stream and stayed there.

After a little while Fruen called:

“You must come and stand by the horses; we are going off to see if we can find some wild hops or something nice.”

But when I came up they decided that the wild hops were over, and there were no rowan berries left now, nor any richly coloured leaves.

“There’s nothing in the woods now,” said Fr?kenen. And she spoke to me directly once again: “Well, there’s no churchyard here for you to roam about in.”

“No.”

&ldq............