There are more than I unworthy, who have noted this. For, as the before-named Counsellor Niels Ingebrechtsen was at Copenhagen, in order to try to gain the office of Collector of Tolls, he said the same to the King's Confessor, who was known to him. And as Niels sought _Audience_ of the King, the Confessor followed him, and, in the King's Presence, he prayed Master Niels frankly to relate all which he had told to him. And when the King rightly understood how it had befallen, that "The Estate" had come into Curt's possession, and what had been the cause of its ruin, namely, that the King's most noble name had, in all innocence, stood father to both these things, the King graciously vouchsafed to lend his ear, and after much thought to say, "The Lord is more cunning than all the rogues put together." And these words of the King, do I in all humility make mine own, as I leave behind me this history, and repair to other Lands. About the year 1830 the following was all that remained of "The Estate." The Mountain with the woods, in which the fir-trees were again beginning to predominate, the great ruinous house, the curious gardens, with their stone walls, on each side of the avenue, several bare fields between the gardens and the town, and a few more on either hand. Beside this some clearings round about, still belonged to "The Estate." The then owner, a tall, dark, dirty fellow, in a green apron which reached to his feet, worked in his own garden; this, with the addition of a few cows, was his only means of subsistence. He was the only survivor of the whole family in that part of the country, and he was unmarried. II JOHN KURT CHAPTER I LONELINESS At fifteen Konrad Kurt had left his home; he could no longer bear to witness the cruelty with which his mother was treated; for domestic tyranny was an heirloom in the Kurt family. He crossed over to Hull, and made his home for some time with an uncle, but was eventually sent, at his expense, to live in the country. The boy's nervous system had been pronounced by a doctor to be far from strong, and if he were to be made any thing of, he must live as much as possible in the open air; it was therefore suggested that he might be brought up as a gardener. Now gardening chanced to be a perfect _gourmandise_ in the Kurt family, so that the lad eventually adopted it as his profession.