and heard the town-clock of Rambin strike two. When all was still, save
a few larks, who were tuning their morning songs, they all fell on their
knees and worshipped God, resolving henceforth to live a pious and a
Christian life.

When the sun rose, John arranged the procession, and they set out for
Rambin. Every well-known object that they saw awoke pleasing
recollections in the bosom of John and his bride; and as they passed by
Rodenkirchen, John recognised, among the people that gazed at and
followed them, his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog
Speed. It was about four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and
they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the
house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these
Asiatic princes, for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at
Constantinople and at Moscow, said they were. There John saw his father
and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old
minister Krabbe stood there too, in his black slippers and white
nightcap, gaping and staring with the rest.

John discovered himself to his parents, and Elizabeth to hers; and the
wedding-day was soon fixed. And such a wedding was never seen before or
since in the island of Rügen, for John sent to Stralsund and Greifswald
for whole boat-loads of wine and sugar and coffee; and whole herds of
oxen, sheep, and pigs were driven to the feast. The quantity of harts
and roes and hares that were shot upon the occasion it were vain to
attempt to tell, or to count the fish that was caught. There was not a
musician in Rügen or in Pomerania that was not engaged, for John was
immensely rich, and he wished to display his wealth.

John did not neglect his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd. He gave