g! I must travel on."
Cordially he shook Otto's hand, and pursued his slow journey.

The brothers of the eelman were active fishermen, as their father
had been before them; and although they were all married they lived
together. The swarm of children was not insignificant; young and old
formed one family, in which the old grandmother had the first voice.

Otto approached the dwelling; before it lay a little plot of land,
planted with potatoes and carrots, and also beds of onions and thyme.
Two large bull-dogs, with sharp teeth and wicked eyes, rushed toward
Otto. "Tyv! Grumsling!" shrieked a voice, and the dogs let fall their
tails and drew back, with a low growl, toward the house. Here at the
threshold sat an old woman in a red woolen jacket, with a handkerchief
of the same material and same color about her neck, and upon her head
a man's black felt hat. She spun. Otto immediately recognized the old
blind grandmother.

"God's peace be in the house!" said he.

"That voice I have not heard for a year and a day!" replied the old
woman, and raised her head, as if she would see him with her dead eyes.
"Are not you Major Thostrup's Otto? You resemble him in the voice. I
thought, truly, that if you came here you would pay us a visit. Ide
shall leave the baits and put on the kettle, that you may have a cup of
coffee. Formerly you did not use to despise our entertainment. You have
not grown proud with your journey, have you? The coffee-vetch [Author's
Note: Astragalus baeticus is used as a substitute for coffee, and is
principally grown upon the sand-hills west of Holmsland. It is first
freed from the husk, and then dried and roasted a little.] is good; it
is from Holmsland, and tastes better than the merchant's beans." The
dogs still growled at Otto. "Cannot you stupid beasts, who have still
eyes in your heads to see with, recognize that this is the Major's
Otto?" cried she wrathfully, and gave them several good blows with her
hand.

Otto's arrival created a great stir in the little household that he was
welcome, you might see by every countenance.

"Yes," said the grandmother, "now you are grown much wiser in the town,
could, very likely, were it needful, write an almanac! You will very
likely have found for yourself a little bride there, or will you fetch
one out of Lemvig? for no doubt she must be from a town! Yes, I have
known him ever since he was a little fellow; yonder, on the wall, he
made, out of herrings' head