"Hear, hear!" from the adherents of Hartwig Juel.
"I do not for a moment pretend that the nominee of his Majesty would not prove an excellent bishop, but I do fear that a nomination by the crown would be the establishment of a dangerous precedent."
"Hear! hear!" from the adherents of Olaf Petersen.
"At the same time it must be borne in mind that the temporal welfare of the See ought to be put in the hands of some one conversant with the condition into which they have been allowed to lapse."
"Hear! hear!" from the adherents of Thomas Lange.
"I would suggest, as we none of us can agree, that we refer the decision to an umpire."
General commotion, and whispers, and looks of alarm.
"How are we to obtain one at once conversant with the condition of the diocese, and not a partizan?" asked the Dean.
"There is a wretched little village in the midst of the Roager Heath, cut off from communication with the world, in which lives a priest named Peter Nielsen on his cure, a man who is related to no one here, belongs, I believe, to no gentle family, and, therefore, would have no family interests one way or the other to bias him. He has the character of being a shrewd man of business, some of the estates of the Church are on the Roager Heath, and he knows how they have been treated, and I have always heard that he is a good preacher and an indefatigable parish priest. Let him be umpire. I can think of none other who would not be a partizan."
The proposition was so extraordinary and unexpected that the Chapter, at first, did not know what to think of it. Who was this Peter Nielsen? No one knew of him anything more than what Jep Mundelstrup had said, and he, it was believed, had drawn largely on his imagination for his facts. Indeed, he was the least known man among the diocesan clergy. It was disputed whether he was a good preacher. Who had heard him? no one. Was it true that he was not a gentleman by birth? No one knew to what family he belonged. In default of any other solution to the dead lock in which the Chapter stood, it was agreed by all that the selection of a bishop for Ribe should be left to Peter Nielsen of Roager.
That same day, indeed as soon after the dissolution of the meeting as was possible, one of the Canons mounted his horse, and rode away to the Roager Heath.