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Chap. XLIV.
OLD RAT OF HEE.
215
how it occurred, for less than a century ago the whole
land was overrun, and Ringkjøbing most of all.
There arrived one day in the port a vessel from
Finmark in Norway. The captain came on shore, and
confided to the care of a merchant a sack of clothes, to
be left till called for in his warehouse.
On returning after an absence of some days, he finds
his goods nearly destroyed by the rats. The merchant
declares it is not his fault—we are overrun with them.
“ Would you like to get rid of them ?” inquires the
stranger. “ Indeed it would be a blessing,” answers the
merchant. So the stranger takes a book from his pocket,
and begins to read aloud. From his tone you might have
imagined it to be the ‘ Church Service,’ only he
commenced at the wrong end and read backwards. No
sooner had he begun than all the rats in the town, all
the rats from the farms, water and land rats, come
running as hard as they can go, helter skelter, tumbling
into the fiorde and drowning themselves. All the world
stood amazed; at last they arrive more slowly; and
now at the end comes an aged rat, so old, so rheumatic
he can hardly crawl. “ Are you the last ?” inquires the
wizard, for such he must have been. “ Last but one,”
he replied: “ no one remains but my father’s brother,
the old rat of Hee, and he’ll be here soon.” And
come he did—an old rat, white as snow: dragging
himself to the water-side, he plunged into the fiorde, the
last of his race, since which time none have ever been
met with in this part of the Amt of Ringkjøbing.
This evening, after dining with our friends, we walked
out into the fields near their house, to witness the
process of threshing the rape in the open air to the
sound of music. A small threshing-floor, with eight
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