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An hour after their departure they passed the church of Hitterdal, an old and quaint edifice, surmounted with gables and turrets rising one above the other, without the slightest regard to anything like regularity of outline.

Their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the Henkersteg.

I looked at everything that, despite the rain, was to be seen of the little town, later so dear to me, the pretty gables, the narrow little streets, glistening with water, the sombre elms creaking and groaning in the storm, the yellow raging sea. I also saw the house, in which I now live, and thought it a pretty, dignified little structure with its free-stone gable, and its tall windows.

To the left of me ran the great plain brimmed with mist; the manor, with its high gables and chimney-stacks, stood up over an orchard, surrounded by a high, ancient brick wall, with a gate between tall gate-posts surmounted by stone balls.

And standing thus before the inn he let his eyes wander over its massive crossbeams, its leaning gables, its rows of gleaming lattices, and so up to the great sign swinging above the door an ancient sign whereon a weather-beaten hound, dim-legged and faded of tail, pursued a misty blur that, by common report, was held to be a hare.

Lawrence is a city of many charms and of much stately beauty. Its narrow, climbing streets, with their quaint shops and curious gables, its old market, with chaffering habitant farmers and their wives, are full of living interest.

It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson, with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn ground; before the day breaks the waters of the Mälar roll there; the Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in the east. The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there rise towers and forts.

In the excitement of the journey and the arrival amid new surroundings, she had managed to keep up a show of good spirits, but now alone once more, with the wind singing mournfully about the gables and rattling the windows, she was sad and so lonely. She thought what her life had once promised to be and what it had become.

The stone ran up to the eaves; but the two gables were of timber. It was on quite a bit of hill then, and had broken stone steps up to the first terrace, where great clumps of brownish yellow lilies were in bloom. When strolling parties of British soldiery went marauding about, the residents of this vicinity used to flee to the old Plum house as a place of refuge.

Pickwick and Oliver Twist have been improved off the face of the earth by cheap newspapers and sanitary reform. The fun has gone out of Vanity Fair, and the House of the Seven Gables is an hotel with seven hundred beds. Comfort, electric light, railway sleeping-cars, and equality are excellent things, but they are the death of romance.