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196
VOSBORG.
Chap. XLIII.
It was the custom each succeeding spring for the
peasants of the domain to drive up their cows and turn
them loose into the meadows, to eat off the salt grass—a
good alterative it was considered for the cattle—the
fields themselves benefiting by the operation. One
morning, young Peter Tang, a boy of eleven years
of age, while driving his beasts to grass, meets by the
bridge of Vosborg an old woman seated on a waggon
laden with apples.*
Little Peter as he passes by holds up his hands,
childlike, and begs an apple from the old woman, who
refused, crying out, “You little miscreant ! you ask an
apple from me, a poor woman, when in your own hand
you hold a golden one of your own!” f Later in life
these words of the old woman often crossed his mind,
and encouraged him in his industry and perseverance.
Peter is now eighteen years of age. The Jutlanders
were less slaves to their landowners than the peasants
of Zealand; still they were subject to the feudal
conscription, from which, with the good will of the lord,
they could purchase freedom by the payment of fifty
dollars. So old Tang goes up to the manor with a
bag containing the necessary sum, and begs to purchase
the freedom of his boy.
“No, no,” replies the lord of the castle, “your son is
a fine clever lad, and in these days good soldiers are
wanted. I can’t let him off.”
The peasant saw well enough that it was something
else his lord wanted, so determined to know his terms.
* Apples were not then cultivated in this part of Jutland; so the
Holsteiners and people from the East sent up their refuse to sell to the
peasantry, who were glad to purchase them in exchange for eels.
f People’s good fortune was always foretold—afterwards.
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