spring up between the sparkling jets of water. A pretty servant-maid was
just filling her pails, and she gave Knud a refreshing draught; she had a
handful of roses, and she gave him one, which appeared to him like a good
omen for the future. From a neighboring church came the sounds of music,
and the familiar tones reminded him of the organ at home at Kjøge; so he
passed into the great cathedral. The sunshine streamed through the painted
glass windows, and between two lofty slender pillars. His thoughts became
prayerful, and calm peace rested on his soul. He next sought and found a
good master in Nuremberg, with whom he stayed and learnt the German
language.
The old moat round the town had been converted into a number of little
kitchen gardens; but the high walls, with their heavy-looking towers, are
still standing. Inside these walls the ropemaker twisted his ropes along a
walk built like a gallery, and in the cracks and crevices of the walls
elderbushes grow and stretch their green boughs over the small houses
which stand below. In one of these houses lived the master for whom Knud
worked; and over the little garret window where he sat, the elder-tree waved
its branches. Here he dwelt through one summer and winter, but when
spring came again, he could endure it no longer. The elder was in blossom,
and its fragrance was so homelike, that he fancied himself back again in the
gardens of Kjøge. So Knud left his master, and went to work for another
who lived farther in the town, where no elder grew. His workshop was quite
close to one of the old stone bridges, near to a water-mill, round which the
roaring stream rushed and foamed always, yet restrained by the neighboring
houses, whose old, decayed balconies hung over, and seemed ready to fall
into the water. Here grew no elder; here was not even a flower-pot, with its
little green plant; but just opposite the workshop stood a great willow-tree,
which seemed to hold fast to the house for fear of being carried away by the
water. It stretched its branches over the stream just as those of the willow-
tree in the garden at Kjøge had spread over the river. Yes, he had indeed
gone from elder-mother to willow-father. There was a something about the
tree here, especially in the moonlight nights, that went direct to his heart;
