So I wandered, and whithersoever I strayed, back to the Dom I came and lingered there. There was the seat in which She sat, in her fair girlhood, during the long Sunday sermons, while I was banished to the “men’s side” across the aisle. Yonder the door through which we had come in together on the day of our betrothal, when the doing gave notice to all the world forever after to hold its peace; and down this aisle we had walked, hand in hand, with the old parson’s blessing in our ears and our hearts, out into the world that had suddenly become glorified. And now, across the Square, there hung from a window She and I both well knew, the flag of freedom and of hope under which we were growing old together. I wanted it so that when we came back we should be within sight of the Domkirke and as near to it as might be. For the church is as much part of my life as is the memory of my father and mother. Indeed, it is a big part of the life of the Old Town, all of its past and more than half of the present. With might and main did we wave our flag when the King came. For days the silent street had echoed with the tramp of troops come from far-off garrison towns to receive him. The children stared; they had never seen soldiers. In us of the past generation it touched a wound that ached still. Forty years had not made us forget those winter nights of weary waiting for our beaten army on its way to the north, its face still to the foe that followed fast. That spring we saw our country cut in twain and a wall of bayonets drawn between us and our brothers to the south. King Christian had not forgotten, either, the great tragedy of his and the nation’s life. I saw it in his furrowed face as he looked up at old Dannebrog flying from the church tower. Perhaps he thought of the thousands of hungry eyes riveted upon it across the frontier. Up there at least the enemy could not reach it, though he tore it from their homes. But if the ghost sat at the banquet, no one gave any sign. In fact, no one did anything but run and shout for three whole days. It was Ribe’s one chance to cheer its King, and it dropped all else and went at it with a rush. Fifty times a day the alarm was given: “Here they come!” and men, women, and children ran and swung their hats and cheered until they were red in the face. We too. My little boy had announced with republican dignity that “he guessed the President was more than any King,” but when he saw the kind old face of King Christian he swung his flag and yelled louder than any of us. “Gee! Mamma,” he said, when it was over for the moment, “I didn’t know it was like that. I just had to.”