The Old Town stood on a wide plain, the fertile marsh between it and the shore, behind it the barren heath, with no tree or shrub to break the sweep of the pitiless west wind. The very broom on the barrows, beneath which slept the old vikings, it cropped short on the side that looked toward the sea they loved so well. Summer and winter it piped its melancholy lay above their heads. At sundown the sea-fogs, rolling in over the land in a dense gray cloud, wrapped them in their damp embrace. There was no dike to protect the coast, but beyond the shallows lay a string of islands that within historic times had been torn from the mainland, and these stood the brunt of the onset when the North Sea was angry. But when the wind had blown hard from the west for days, as was its wont, and then veered to the north, so that the waters from the great deep were massed in the inlet, then it was we heard the big bell sing in the tower. [Illustration: THE CAUSEWAY IN A STORM.] Morning broke after such a night, upon a raging ocean where at sunset there had been meadows and dry fields. Far as the eye reached only storm-tossed waves were in sight. The shores were strewn with perch and other fresh-water fish that were driven up on the pavement in shoals by the rushing tides. On the great causeway that stretched north and south, high above the flood level, cattle, hares, grouse, and field-mice huddled together in wretched, shivering groups. With break of day the butchers of the town went out, if going was at all possible, to bleed the drowning cattle that could yet be saved for food. Sometimes the trip had to be made in boats, and even in the streets of the town these were in demand when the “storm-flood” was at its height. I recollect very well seeing the water washing through the ground-story windows of the houses down by the harbor. By ordinary tides we were there five miles from the sea. At such times, when the flood had surprised the cattle yet in the far-outlying pastures, we heard news of disaster. The herders had been slow in gaining the refuges provided for them, and had perished with their herds.