next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared,
heavy, hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks.
A young girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had
dark-brown hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes;
otherwise she was strangely pale. But her paleness toned to pink
and not to gray. Her cheeks had no higher color than the rest of
her face, the lips had hardly enough. She wore a white linen shirt
and a leather belt with a gold buckle. Her skirt was blue with a
red hem. She rowed by the outlaws without seeing them. They kept
breathlessly still, but not for fear of being seen, but only to be
able to really see her. As soon as she had gone they were as if
changed from stone images to living beings. Smiling, they looked at
one another.

"She was white like the water-lilies," said one. "Her eyes were as
dark as the water there under the pine-roots."

They were so excited that they wanted to laugh, really laugh as no
one had ever laughed by that pool, till the cliffs thundered with
echoes and the roots of the pines loosened with fright.

"Did you think she was pretty?" asked Berg Rese.

"Oh, I do not know, I saw her for such a short time. Perhaps she
was."

"I do not believe you dared to look at her. You thought that it was
a mermaid."

And they were again shaken by the same extravagant merriment.

***

Tord had once as a child seen a drowned man. He had found the body
on the shore on a summer day and had not been at all afraid, but at
night he had dreamed terrible dreams. He saw a sea, where every
wave rolled a dead man to his feet. He saw, too, that all the
islands were covered with drowned men, who were dead and belonged
to the sea, but who still could speak and move and threaten him
with withered white hands.

It was so with him now. The girl whom he had seen among the rushes
came back in his dreams. He met her out in the open pool, where the
sunlight fell even greener than among the rushes, and he had time
to see that she was beautiful. He dreamed that he had crept up on
the big pine root in the middle of the dark tarn, but the pine
swayed and rocked so that sometimes he was quite under water. Then
she came forward on the little islands. She stood under the red
mountain ashes and laughed at him. In the last dream-vision he had
come so far that she kissed him. It was already morning, and he
heard that Berg Rese had got up, but he obstinately shut his eyes
to be abl