two great
rocks stand out as if on guard.

One rises from the very verge, the water lapping its foot as it
stands dreaming and gazing over to its fellow of the farther side.
Neitokallio is its name.

The other is more cold and proud. It stands drawn back a little way
from the bank, with head uplifted as in challenge, looking out through
the treetops across the plain. And this is Valimaki.

At the foot of Valimaki a camp-fire was burning. It was midnight. A
group of lumbermen were gathered round the fire, some lying stretched
out with knapsacks under their heads, some leaning one against
another. Blue clouds of smoke curled up from their pipes.

The red fire glowed and glowed, flaring up now and again into bright
flame, tinging the fir stems on the slope as if with blood, and
throwing weird reflections out on to the dark waters of the river. The
men sat in silence over their pipes.

"Look!" said one at last, nodding up towards the head of the rock.
"Looks almost as if she was sitting there still, looking down into the
river."

Several nodded assent.

"Maybe there _is_ someone sitting there."

"Nay, 'tis only a bit of a bush or something. But 'tis the very same
spot where she sat, that's true."

"What's the story?" asks one--a newcomer, on his first trip to
Nuolijoki. "Some fairy tale or other?"

"Fairy tale?" one of the elders breaks in. "You're a stranger, young
man, that's plain to see. 'Tis a true story enough, and not so long
since it all happened neither."

"Fourteen years," says Antti, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I
remember it all as plain as yesterday. Ay, there's queer things happen
in life."

"Did you see it yourself, then?"

"Ay, I did that--and not likely to forget it. 'Twas on that rock I saw
her first time, and a young lad with her."

Some of the men sat up and began filling their pipes afresh.

"Her betrothed, maybe?"

"Ay--or something like it. I didn't know at the time. I was clearing
stray logs here on the shore, and saw them sitting up there together,
looking at the water. I sat down too for a bit, and lit a pipe, and
thinking to myself; well, water's water, and water it'll be for all
their looking. Anyhow, I doubt they must look at something, just to
pass the time."

"Well, and what then? What happened?"

"Nay, they did but sit there a bit and then went away. But next day
again, I was working there same as before, and there's my young miss
a-sitting there in the very s