d the mother-eel said to her daughters,
who begged leave to go a little way up the bay, 'Don't go too far: the
ugly eel spearer might come and snap you all up.' But they went too
far; and of eight daughters only three came back to the eel-mother,
and these wept and said, 'We only went a little way before the door,
and the ugly eel spearer came directly, and stabbed five of our party
to death.' 'They'll come again,' said the mother-eel. 'Oh no,'
exclaimed the daughters, 'for he skinned them, and cut them in two,
and fried them.' 'Oh, they'll come again,' the mother-eel persisted.
'No,' replied the daughters, 'for he ate them up.' 'They'll come
again,' repeated the mother-eel. 'But he drank brandy after them,'
continued the daughters. 'Ah, then they'll never come back,' said the
mother, and she burst out crying, 'It's the brandy that buries the
eels.'

"And therefore," said the eel breeder, in conclusion, "it is always
right to take brandy after eating eels."

[Illustration: THE EEL BREEDER'S VISIT.]

And this story was the tinsel thread, the most humorous recollection
of Juergen's life. _He_ likewise wanted to go a little way outside the
door, and up the bay--that is to say, out into the world in a ship;
and his mother said, like the eel breeder, "There are so many bad
people--eel spearers!" But he wished to go a little way past the
sand-hills, a little way into the dunes, and he succeeded in doing so.
Four merry days, the happiest of his childhood, unrolled themselves,
and the whole beauty and splendour of Jutland, all the joy and
sunshine of his home, was concentrated in these. He was to go to a
festival--though it was certainly a burial feast.

A wealthy relative of the fisherman's family had died. The farm lay
deep in the country, eastward, and a point towards the north, as the
saying is. Juergen's foster-parents were to go, and he was to accompany
them from the dunes, across heath and moor. They came to the green
meadows where the river Skjaern rolls its course, the river of many
eels, where mother-eels dwell with their daughters, who are caught and
eaten up by wicked people. But men were said sometimes to have acted
no better towards their own fellow men; for had not the knight, Sir
Bugge, been murdered by wicked people? and though he was well spoken
of, had he not wanted to kill the architect, as the legend tells us,
who had built for him the castle, with the thick walls and tower,
where Juergen and his paren