Chapter
19
What a crowd filled the large hall of the University of Christiana in which the drawing of the great lottery was to take place—a crowd that overflowed into the very court-yards, as even the immense building was not large enough to accommodate such a throng, and even into the adjoining streets, as the court-yards, too, proved inadequate toward the last.
On that Sunday, the 15th of July, it certainly was not by their calmness and phlegm that one would have recognized these madly excited people as Norwegians. Was this unwonted excitement due solely to the interest excited by this drawing, or was it due, at least, in a measure, to the unusually high temperature of the summer's day?
The drawing was to begin at three o'clock precisely. There were one hundred prizes—divided into th
