IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 139 



burst from the dark. In five minutes it was raining 

 with mad fury, the wooden shoes clattered wildly 

 towards shelter, the lightning was pink and hateful, 

 the thunder banged and roared, and tlie wind came 

 bellowing up into the tumult. Through the noise 

 came the shiver and clink of broken glass below; 

 the jeweller's window was blown in, a large sheet of 

 plate glass against which we had that afternoon 

 vainly flattened our noses in search of a character- 

 istic Danish ornament. It was long before sleep 

 could be found, and it was of an unsatisfactory kind, 

 headaehey from the electrified atmosphere, discon- 

 tented because of the unwearied guile of the feather 

 bag. Out of a dream where hjule-haades crawled 

 spider-like through heather came a sense of deathly 

 chill ; a hand that was weak with sleep strove to 

 reinstate the warmth and found it not, till, groping 

 outwards, the feather bag was encountered, couching 

 in mountainous height at the bedside, like a bloated 

 and malignant sheep. 



The rain did not cease. In the morning the square 

 was dim and dripping, and the gutters writhed a 

 yellow overflow at ten miles an hour. We fell to 

 time-tables, and found a train at 10 a.m. for Copen- 

 hagen; we caught it, no man withstanding our 

 flight, not even the landlord, who yesterday had 

 been a sanguine man, fertile in pleasure trips and 

 hjule-haades, full of calm confidence in his weather. 

 They know at Silkeborg what it means when the 

 autumn breaks up, and do not fritter a good lie on a 

 hopeless cause. Looking back from the 'bus we 

 saw the jeweller's window filled with soaked yellow 

 planking; in my bedroom the landlord was already 

 taking down the summer curtains. We hope that 

 he will some day read the inscription in the visitors' 

 book in which my cousin tried to record her esteem 



