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There are some young trees which, when they are planted have the roottwisted, and will never take hold in the soil. They may shoot out aprofusion of leaves and flowers, but they must soon die. Such was theway with Jens. He had sent out his small branches upwards and to thesides, had fared excellently of the chameleon’s dish and eaten air,promise-crammed, and the while he had forgotten to put out roots. Nowthe time came when by the law of nature, the bright, abundant bloommust needs wither, fade and waste away. It is possible, had his imagination been turned on to fresh pastures, that he might for a while have drawn nourishment through it, and have delayed his exit. Once or twice, to amuse him, Jakob had talked to him of China; the queer outlandish world captivated the mind of the child, he dwelt with the highest excitement on pictures of pig-tailed Chinamen, dragons, and fishermen with pelicans, and upon the fantastic names of Hong Kong and Yangtze-kiang. But the grown-up people did not realize the significance of his novel imaginative venture, and so, for lack of sustenance, the frail, fresh branch soon drooped.

A short time after the children’s party, early in the new year, the child grew pale and hung his head. The old doctor came and gave him medicine to no effect. It was a quiet, unbroken decline, the plant was going out.

As Jens was put to bed and was, so to say, legitimately releasing hishold upon the world of actuality, his fancy made headway and ran alongwith him, like the sails of a small boat, from which the ballast isthrown overboard. There were now, all the time people round him, whowould listen to what he said, gravely, without interrupting or contradicting him; this happy state of things enraptured him. The dreamer’s sick bed became a throne.

Emilie sat at the bed all the time, distressed by a feeling of impotence which sometimes in the night made her wring her hands. All her life she had endeavoured to sever good from bad, right from wrong, happiness from unhappiness. Here she was, she reflected with dismay, in the hands of a being, much smaller and weaker than herself, to whom these were all one, who welcomed light and darkness, pleasure and pain, in the same spirit of gallant, debonair approval and fellowship. The fact, she told herself, did away with all need of her comfort and consolation here at her child’s sick bed; it often seemed to abolish her very existence.

Now within the brotherhood of poets, Jens was a humorist, a comic fabulist. It was, in each individual phenomenon of life, the whimsical, the burlesque moment that attracted and inspired him. To the gale, grave, young woman, his fancies seemed sacrilegious within a death-room, yet after all it was his own death-room.

"Oh, there were so many rats, Mamma," he said, "so many rats. They were all over the house. One came to get a bit of lard on the shelf,— pat! a rat jumped at one. They ran across my face at night. Put your face close to me, and I will show you how it felt. "

"There are no rats here, my darling," said Emilie.

"No, none," said he, "when I am not sick any more, I will go back andfetch you one. The rats like the people better than the people likethem. For they think us good, lovely to eat. There was an old Comedian, who lived in the garret, he played comedy when he was young, and had travelled to foreign countries. Now he gave the little girls money to kiss him, but they would not kiss him because they said that they did not like his nose. It was a curious nose, too,—all fallen in,—and when they would not, he cried, and wrung his hands. But he got ill, and died, and nobody knew about it. But when at last they went in, do you know, Mamma,—the rats had eaten off his nose—nothing else, his nose only! But people will not eat rats, even when they are very hungry. There was a fat boy named Mads in the cellar, who caught rats in many curious ways, and cooked them. But old Madam Mahler said that she despised him for it, and the children called him Rat Mads. "