Little Tuk looked, and all was red and green before his eyes; but as soon as the confusion of colors was somewhat over, all of a sudden there appeared a wooded slope close to the bay, and high up above stood a magnificent old church, with two high pointed towers.  From out the hill-side spouted fountains in thick streams of water, so that there was a continual splashing; and close beside them sat an old king with a golden crown upon his white head:  that was King Hroar, near the fountains, close to the town of Roeskilde, as it is now called.  And up the slope into the old church went all the kings and queens of Denmark, hand in hand, all with their golden crowns; and the organ played and the fountains rustled.  Little Tuk saw all, heard all.  “Do not forget the diet,” said King Hroar.*

Roeskilde, once the capital of Denmark.  The town takes its name from King Hroar, and the many fountains in the neighborhood.  In the beautiful cathedral the greater number of the kings and queens of Denmark are interred.  In Roeskilde, too, the members of the Danish Diet assemble.

Again all suddenly disappeared.  Yes, and whither?  It seemed to him just as if one turned over a leaf in a book.  And now stood there an old peasant-woman, who came from Soroe,* where grass grows in the market-place.  She had an old grey linen apron hanging over her head and back:  it was so wet, it certainly must have been raining.  “Yes, that it has,” said she; and she now related many pretty things out of Holberg’s comedies, and about Waldemar and Absalon; but all at once she cowered together, and her head began shaking backwards and forwards, and she looked as she were going to make a spring.  “Croak! croak!” said she.  “It is wet, it is wet; there is such a pleasant deathlike stillness in Sorbe!” She was now suddenly a frog, “Croak”; and now she was an old woman.  “One must dress according to the weather,” said she.  “It is wet; it is wet.  My town is just like a bottle; and one gets in by the neck, and by the neck one must get out again!  In former times I had the finest fish, and now I have fresh rosy-cheeked boys at the bottom of the bottle, who learn wisdom, Hebrew, Greek—­Croak!”

* Sorbe, a very quiet little town, beautifully situated, surrounded by woods and lakes.  Holberg, Denmark’s Moliere, founded here an academy for the sons of the nobles.  The poets Hauch and Ingemann were appointed professors here.  The latter lives there still.

When she spoke it sounded just like the noise of frogs, or as if one walked with great boots over a moor; always the same tone, so uniform and so tiring that little Tuk fell into a good sound sleep, which, by the bye, could not do him any harm.

But even in this sleep there came a dream, or whatever else it was:  his little sister Augusta, she with the blue eyes and the fair curling hair, was suddenly a tall, beautiful girl, and without having wings was yet able to fly; and she now flew over Zealand—­over the green woods and the blue lakes.