[Illustration: KING HARALD’S STONE.] The Old Town was set in a meadow, grass to the right of it, grass to the left of it, stretching away toward the horizon until in the south and east it came up against the black moor, and toward the sunset a little way met the sands of the western sea. What sport was there for boys in such a country? My own boys asked me that question with something of impatience on a walk through the fields, for they had been sizing up the lads of their own age on baseball and found them no good. They threw the ball “just like girls.” Not many days after one of them came home with a bruised nose and an increased respect for Danish muscle. It was good for fighting, anyhow. But, in truth, we did not run to baseball when I was a boy; and as for fighting, we had no more than was good for us; when any Uitlander bragged, for instance. As I look back now it seems to me we didn’t have time for either, so busy were we with our sports. There was the brook that led to the old manse, hidden quite behind a wind-tossed thicket of scrub-oak that had run over the sunken walls since the days when bishops were fighting men who went clad in iron to the wars. Then the manse was one of the strongholds of the Ribe prelates who led the armies of the King against the German counts, notably the “Strong Master Jacob,” whose fists and sword saved many a soul where preaching failed. The brook was now barely a step wide, and we boys could easily jump over it in places; but the wild birds built their nests in its banks in spring, and up where we had our early bonfires it widened into a dark still pool, hedged in with mint and forget-me-nots, where wary trout were always darting from the deep shadows. I go to seek that pool first thing when I return to the Old Town now, and it is not changed. But the boys of to-day seem to have forgotten it. [Illustration: “IN MY DREAMS I SIT BY THE CREEK.”]