ound him, and
many a time the sweat absolutely streamed from his forehead.

In proportion as hostility increased among the old people, they had a
good deal of fault to find with one another, and Eilert heard no end of
evil things spoken about the Finns at home. Now it was this, and now it
was that. They didn't even row like honest folk, for, after the Finnish
fashion, they took high and swift strokes, as if they were womenkind,
and they all talked together, and made a noise while they rowed, instead
of being "silent in the boat." But what impressed Eilert most of all was
the fact that, in the Finnwoman's family, they practised sorcery and
idolatry, or so folks said. He also heard tell of something beyond all
question, and that was the shame of having Finn blood in one's veins,
which also was the reason why the Finns were not as good as other honest
folk, so that the magistrates gave them their own distinct burial-ground
in the churchyard, and their own separate "Finn-pens" in church. Eilert
had seen this with his own eyes in the church at Berg.

All this made him very angry, for he could not help liking the Finn
folks down yonder, and especially little Zilla. They two were always
together: she knew such a lot about the Merman. Henceforth his
conscience always plagued him when he played with her; and whenever she
stared at him with her large black eyes while she told him tales, he
used to begin to feel a little bit afraid, for at such times he
reflected that she and her people belonged to the Damned, and that was
why they knew so much about such things. But, on the other hand, the
thought of it made him so bitterly angry, especially on her account.
She, too, was frequently taken aback by his odd behaviour towards her,
which she couldn't understand at all; and then, as was her wont, she
would begin laughing at and teasing him by making him run after her,
while she went and hid herself.

One day he found her sitting on a boulder by the sea-shore. She had in
her lap an eider duck which had been shot, and could only have died
quite recently, for it was still warm, and she wept bitterly over it. It
was, she sobbed, the same bird which made its nest every year beneath
the shelter of their outhouse--she knew it quite well, and she showed
him a red-coloured feather in its white breast. It had been struck dead
by a single shot, and only a single red drop had come out of it; it had
tried to reach its nest, but had died on its wa