A Story from the Sand Dunes

In an instant the men had leaped into the boat and before he was aware of it, they had bound his hands together with a rope. "It's well you're caught!" they said. "Your crime will cost you your life!"

He was accused of nothing less than murder! Morten had been found stabbed in the neck with a knife; late, the evening before, one of the fishermen had met Jörgen on his way to Morten's house, and it was remembered that it wasn't the first time Jörgen had threatened Morten with a knife; there seemed no doubt that he was the murderer.

Now the question was where to confine him. Ringkjöbing was the proper place, but it was a long way off, and the wind was against them. In less than half an hour they had crossed Skjaerum Fiord, and now they were only a quarter of a mile from Nörre Vosborg, which was a strong mansion with moats and ramparts. One of the men in the boat was the brother of the keeper of this mansion; he suggested that they might get permission to confine Jörgen, for the time being, in the dungeon where Long Margrethe, the gypsy, had been imprisoned until her execution.

No one listened to Jörgen's denials, and those few drops of blood on his shirt were silent witnesses against him. Conscious of his innocence and of the fact that there was no chance of his being cleared, he calmly resigned himself to his fate.

They landed near the old rampart, where the castle of Sir Bugge had stood - it was the very same spot that Jörgen's feet had trodden years before when he had gone with his foster parents to the funeral party, where he had spent those four happy days on the heath. By the very same path they now led him up to Nörre Vosborg; and here, as then, the elderbush was in full bloom, and the tall lime trees wafted their fragrance to him - he might have imagined it was only yesterday that he had been here last.

Under the grand staircase in the western wing of the building a passage leads into a low-roofed vaulted cell; it was from here that Long Margrethe was led to her execution.