140 ST RAY -AW AYS 



of the stewed partridges with whortleberry sauce. 

 It may be a comfort to him. 



Looking from tlie window of the train we saw 

 Himmclbjerg sulkily endeavouring to hide its summit 

 in low and drizzling clouds. The moment was ripe 

 for departure. 



VIII 



The faces of the peasant-women in the third-class 

 carriage looked pale and careworn in the light that 

 came through a window blurred with rain. Not 

 even the whelming of all outside interests in mild 

 meditation on me and my cousin, not the instant 

 friendliness in small incidents of parcels and rugs, 

 removed the impression of hard and patient living, 

 of untimely dying, of grief not distant. It was more 

 than an impression ; it was what we knew from 

 the testimony of their own countrywomen. None of 

 them were old ; old women are not plenty among 

 the peasantry of Denmark. There is little of the 

 ripe and autumn-tinted age that is a commonplace 

 of English life. It is a strange thing; the pastoral 

 clean life that lacks the power to stay; the healthy 

 work that spends the strength and gives nothing 

 back. Somewhere in the simple Danish existence 

 the adversary waits his time ; and the time is often, 

 and the escape seldom. 



An even stranger thing was the reflection that any 

 one of these unostentatious-looking women might at 

 this moment occupy the position of being her own 

 aunt. It was but lately that this possibility had 

 dawned upon us, and we applied it incessantly to our 

 I't'l low-passengers. Can it be to attain at least a 

 brevet rank in tlie elder generation that the short- 

 lived Danish women marry their uncles? To be the 



