LUND UNIVERSITY 59 



and bread flavoured with anise-seed of a woman who was 

 carrying her basket to the ferry, and the boatman offered 

 him a drink of light beer from his firkin for his luck in 

 catching fish. 



It was still broad daylight, for all that he had lin- 

 gered, when he arrived at Hessleholm, where he walked 

 about the town, or rather village, with its neat wooden 

 houses with steps up and down at the porch ; houses 

 not so dainty as in Switzerland, yet still pretty and 

 inviting, set in gardens full of cherry blossom, which is 

 in full bloom even so far south as Sk&ne at this date. 

 Hessleholm is an increasing place now that the railway 

 is made to carry off the stores of timber that its saw- 

 mills make available to the outside world. No lectures 

 for Carl to-night : these good people are strangers, and 

 he has already fascinated them by his silver tongue and 

 all the wonders he can show them in their own sur- 

 roundings. They do not allow him to go forth with 

 dry rye biscuit : they force on him an abundant break- 

 fast, and they pack up a neat dinner of white bread and 

 rarer fresh meat, and tempting cream cheese, and pickled 

 fish, and bits of angelica steeped for weeks in honey. 



A third day's journey in the sweet fresh air there 

 is something intensely balmy about the air of Sweden 

 in May and a third day's pleasure. So this is SkSne, 

 that he has heard so much of, as we in England hear of 

 the mildness and fertility of Devon. One more ridge 

 of limestone with a windmill on it, and now he is on 

 lower ground, with meadows in the blue distance beyond 



