its foot firmly in among golden leaves amid scarlet fungus.

Davies was preoccupied, but he lighted up when I talked of the Danish
war. 'Germany's a thundering great nation,' he said; 'I wonder if we
shall ever fight her.' A little incident that happened after we
anchored deepened the impression left by this conversation. We crept
at dusk into a shaded back-water, where our keel almost touched the
gravel bed. Opposite us on the Alsen shore there showed, clean-cut
against the sky, the spire of a little monument rising from a leafy
hollow.

'I wonder what that is,' I said. It was scarcely a minute's row in
the dinghy, and when the anchor was down we sculled over to it. A
bank of loam led to gorse and bramble. Pushing aside some branches we
came to a slender Gothic memorial in grey stone, inscribed with
bas-reliefs of battle scenes, showing Prussians forcing a landing in
boats and Danes resisting with savage tenacity. In the failing light
we spelt out an inscription: 'Den bei dem Meeres-Uebergange und der
Eroberung von Alsen am 29. Juni 1864 heldenmüthig gefallenen zum
ehrenden Gedächtniss.' 'To the honoured memory of those who died
heroically at the invasion and storming of Alsen.' I knew the German
passion for commemoration; I had seen similar memorials on Alsatian
battlefields, and several on the Dybbol only that afternoon; but
there was something in the scene, the hour, and the circumstances,
which made this one seem singularly touching. As for Davies, I
scarcely recognized him; his eyes flashed and filled with tears as he
glanced from the inscription to the path we had followed and the
water beyond. 'It was a landing in boats, I suppose,' he said, half
to himself. 'I wonder they managed it. What does _heldenmüthig_
mean?'--'Heroically.'--Heldenmüthig gefallenen,' he repeated, under