A FEW decades ago, I read a strange story, moving and touching, but with a gloomy ending. A story about shadows. 

Someone translated it from the original Danish. Later I found out that the story, The Shadow (Skyggen), is a forgotten story by Hans Christian Andersen. 

The story is under 5,000 words long, but its contents are odd and provoke questions. 

The story goes that a scholar comes from the cold north to live in a hot count