nd the little girl, who you must remember was the Elder Mother, kept crying, "Now we're in the country! See the farmhouse, with the big baking oven standing out of the wall like an enormous egg beside the road! The elder tree is spreading its branches over the house, and the cock is walking around, scratching for his hens. Look at him strut! Now we're near the church; it's high up on the hill, among the great oak trees. See how one of them is half dead! Now we're at the forge; the fire is burning, and the half-clad men are beating with the hammers. Look at the sparks flying all around! We're off! We're off to the nobleman's beautiful estate!"

They were only riding around and around the grass plot, yet the little boy seemed to see everything that the little maiden mentioned as she sat behind him on the magic stick. Then they played on the sidewalk, and marked out a little garden in the earth; and she took the elder flower out of her hair and planted it, and it grew just like the ones that the old people had planted in New Town, when they were little, as I have already told you. They walked hand in hand, the same way the old people did in their childhood, but they didn't go to the Round Tower or the Frederiksborg Garden. No, the little girl took the little boy around the waist, and they flew through the country of Denmark.

And it was spring and it became summer, and it was autumn and it became winter, and there were thousands of pictures in the boy's mind and heart, as the little girl sang to him, "You will never forget this."

And throughout their whole journey the elder tree smelled sweet and fragrant. He noticed the roses and fresh beech trees, but the elder tree smelled the sweetest, for its flowers hung over the little girl's heart, and he often leaned his head against them as they flew onward.

"How beautiful it is here in the spring!" said the little girl.

Then they were standing in the new-leaved beech wood, where the fragrant green woodruff lay spread at their feet, and the pale pink anemones looked glorious against the vivid green.

"Oh, if it could only always be spring in the fragrant beech woods of Denmark!"

"How beautiful it is here in the summer!" she said.

Then they were passing by knightly castles of olden times, where the red walls and pointed gables were mirrored in the canals, and where swans swam about and peered down the shady old avenues. In the fields the corn waved, as if it were a sea; in the ditches were yellow and red flowers, and wild hops and blooming convolvulus were growing in the hedges. In the evening the moon rose round and full, and the haystacks in the meadows smelled fragrant.

"One can never forget it. How beautiful it is here in the autumn!" said the little girl.

And the sky seemed twice as high and twice as blue as ever before, and the forest was brilliant with gorgeous tints of red and yellow and green. The hunting dog raced across the meadows; long lines of wild ducks flew shrieking above the ancient grave mounds, on which the bramble twined over the old stones. The ocean was a dark blue, dotted with white-sailed ships. In the barns old women and girls and children picked hops into a large tub, while the young people sang bal

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