NEAR the grass-covered rampart which encircles Copenhagen lies a great red house with many windows; in these grow balsams and plants of southernwood; the interior is sufficiently poverty-stricken, and poor and old are the people who inhabit it. The building is the Vartu Almshouse.

Look! at the window there leans an old maid: she plucks the withered leaf from the balsam, and looks at the grass-covered rampart, on which many children are playing. What is the old maid thinking of? A whole life-drama is unfolding itself before her mind.

“The poor little children, how happily they play! What red cheeks and what angels' eyes! but they have no shoes nor stockings. They dance on the green rampart, just on the place where, according to the old story, the ground always sank in, many years ago, and where an innocent child had been lured by means of flowers and toys, into an open grave, which was afterwards built up while the child played and ate; and from that moment the mound remained firm and fast, and was quickly covered with fine green turf. The little people who now play on that spot know nothing of the old tale, else would they fancy they heard the child crying deep below the earth, and the dewdrops on each blade of grass would be to them tears of woe. Nor do they know the story of the Danish King who, when the enemy lay outside, rode past here and took an oath that he would die here in his nest: then came women and men who poured boiling water down over the white-clad foes, who, in the snow, were crawling up the outer side of the rampart .

“No! the poor little ones are playing with light spi............