They were poor, and the change from the genial skies of sunny Italy to the bleak North did not make it any easier for them.  Enrico’s teacher saw it, and gave him his overcoat to be made over.  But the boys spotted it and squared accounts with their teacher by snowballing the wearer of the big green plaid until he was glad to leave it at home, and go without.  He was in the military school when war broke out with Germany in 1848.  Both of his brothers volunteered, and fell in battle.  Enrico was ordered out as lieutenant, and put on the shoulder-straps joyfully, to the great scandal of his godfather in Milan, who sympathized with the German cause.  When the young soldier refused to resign he not only cut him off in his will, but took away a pension of four hundred kroner he had given his mother in her widowhood.  If he had thoughts of bringing them over by such means, he found out his mistake.  Mother and son were made of sterner stuff.  Dalgas fought twice for his country, the last time in 1864, as a captain of engineers.

It was no ordinary class, the one of 1851 that resumed its studies in the military high school.  Two of the students did not answer roll-call; their names were written among the nation’s heroic dead.  Some had scars and wore the cross for valor in battle.  All were first lieutenants, to be graduated as captains.  Dalgas had himself transferred from the artillery to the engineers, and was detailed as road inspector.  So the opportunity of his life came to him.

There were few railways in those days; the highways were still the great arteries of traffic.  Dalgas built roads that crossed the heath, and he learned to know it and the strong and independent, if narrow, people who clung to it with such a tenacious grip.  He had a natural liking for practical geology and for the chemistry of the soil, and the deep cuts which his roads sometimes made gave him the best of chances for following his bent.  The heath lay as an open book before him, and he studied it with delight.  He found the traces of the old forests, and noted their extent.  Occasionally the pickaxe uncovered peat deposits of unsuspected depth and value.  Sometimes the line led across the lean fields, and damages had to be discussed and assessed.  He learned the point of view of the heath farmer, sympathized with his struggles, and gained his confidence.  Best of all, he found a man of his own mind, a lawyer by the name of Morville, himself a descendant of the exiled Huguenots.  It is not a little curious that when the way was cleared for the Heath Society’s great work, in its formal organization with M. Mourier-Petersen, a large landowner, as their associate in its management, the three men who for a quarter of a century planned the work and marked out the groove in which it was to run were all of that strong stock which is by no means the most common in Denmark.