stands between the sandhills and the woods, as you sail into Veile
Fiord. All these woods, as far away as to Rosenvold, had been the good
knight his father's, but were lost to us before Ebbe's birth, and leased
on pledge to the Knight Borre, of Egeskov, of whom I am to tell; and
with them went all the crew of verderers, huntsmen, grooms, prickers,
and ostringers that had kept Nebbegaard cheerful the year round.
His mother had died at my master's birth, and the knight himself but two
years after, so that the lad grew up in his poverty with no heritage but
a few barren acres of sand, a tumbling house, and his father's sword,
and small prospect of winning the broad lands out of Borre's clutches.

Nevertheless, under my tutoring he grew into a tall lad and a bold, a
good swordsman, skilful at the tilt and in handling a boat; but not
talkative or free in his address of strangers. The most of his days he
spent in fishing, or in the making and mending of gear; and his
evenings, after our lesson in sword-play, in the reading of books (of
which Nebbegaard had good store), and specially of the Icelanders,
skalds and sagamen; also at times in the study of Latin with me, who had
been bred to the priesthood, but left it for love of his father, my
foster-brother, and now had no ambition of my own but to serve this lad
and make him as good a man.

But there were days when he would have naught to do with fishing or with
books; dark days when I forbore and left him to mope by the dunes, or in
the great garden which had been his mother's, but was now a wilderness
untended. And it was then that he first met with the lady Mette.

For as he walked there one morning, a little before noon, a swift shadow
passed overhead between him and the sun, and almost before he could
glance upward a body came dropping out of the sky and fell with a thud