WINTER came with hard times for the beasts of the forest and the birds of the fields. It was a poor Christmas within mud-walled huts and timbered ships. The Western Sea was thickly studded with wrecks¹, icy hulks, splintered masts, broken boats, and dead ships. Argosies were hurled² upon the coast, shattered to worthless fragments, sunk, swept away, or buried in the sand; for the gale³ blew toward land with a high sea and deadly cold, and human hands were powerless against it. Heaven and earth were one reek⁴ of stinging, whirling snow that drifted in through cracked shutters⁵ and ill-fitting hatches to poverty and rags, and pierced under eaves and doors to wealth and fur-bordered mantles⁶. Beggars and wayfaring⁷ folk froze to death in the shelter of ditches and dikes; poor people died of cold on their bed of straw, and the cattle of the rich fared not much better.

The storm abated⁸, and after it came a clear, tingling⁹ frost, which brought disaster on the land—winter pay for summer folly¹⁰! The Swedish army walked over the Danish waters. Peace was declared, and spring followed with green budding leaves and fair weather, but the young men of Sj?lland did not ride a-Maying that year; for the Swedish soldiers were everywhere. There was peace indeed, but it carried the burdens of war and seemed not likely to live long. Nor did it. When the May garlands had turned dark and stiff under the midsummer sun, the Swedes went against the ramparts of Copenhagen.

During vesper service on the second Sunday in August, the tidings suddenly came: “The Swedes have landed at Kors?r.” Instantly the streets were

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