Chapter 31 - Page 2

It is a right pleasant excursion!"

"Convent ruins and the holy cross!" said Otto; "that sounds quite romantic!" And he commenced his wanderings.

A few scholars from the Latin school, with their books held together by a strait, and then a square built lancer, who greeted in military style an elderly-young lady, who was seated behind a barricade of geraniums and wall flowers, were the only individuals he met with on his way. Yet Otto remarked that the windows were opened as he passed; people wanted to see who the stranger might be who was going up the street.

A long avenue led from the town to the castle. On either side the way lay detached houses, with little gardens. Otto soon reached the remains of old Antvorskov. The way was red from the stones which were flung about, and were now ground to dust. Huge pieces of wall, where the mortar and stone were united in one piece, lay almost concealed among the high nettles. Rather more distant stood a solitary house of two stories. It was narrow, and whitewashed. A thick pilaster, such as one sees in churches, supported the strong wall. This was half of the last wing of the castle,--a mingling of the ancient and incident, of ruin and dwelling-house.

Otto went into the garden, which was laid out upon the hill itself, and its terraces. Here were only young trees; but the walks were everywhere overgrown. The view stretched itself far over the plain, toward the Belt and Funen. He descended from the terrace down to the lowest wall. In this there yet remained a piece of an old tombstone, of the age of the convent, on which you perceived the trace of a female form; and near to this the figure of a skeleton, round which was twined a snake. Otto stood sunk in contemplation, when an old man, with two water-buckets suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, approached a near well.

The old man was very ready to commence a conversation. He told of excavations, and of an underground passage which had not been discovered, but which, according to his opinion, was certainly in existence. So far they had only found a few walled-round spaces, which had most probably been prisons. In one of these was an iron chain fastened into the wall. But with regard to the underground passage, they had only not yet discovered the right place, for it must exist. It led from here, deep under the lake and forest, toward Soröe. There were large iron gates below. At Christmas one could hear how they were swung to and fro. "Whoever should have that which is concealed there," said the old man, "would be a made man, and need not neither slip nor slide."

Otto looked at the solitary wing which rose up over the terrace. How splendid it had been here in former times!

Close to the large wood, several miles in extent, which stretches itself on the other side of Soröe, down to the shore of the King's Brook, lay the rich