Hauke stared at it with fixed eyes, for in the mist dark figures were walking up and down that seemed to him as big as human beings. Far off he saw them promenade back and forth by the steaming fissures, dignified, but with strange, frightening gestures, with long necks and noses. All at once, they began to jump up and down like fools, uncannily, the big ones over the little ones, the little ones over the big ones—then they spread out and lost all shape.

“What do they want? Are they ghosts of the drowned?” thought Hauke. “Hallo!” he screamed out aloud into the night; but they did not heed his cry and kept on with their strange antics.

Then the terrible Norwegian sea spectres came to his mind, that an old captain had once told him about, who bore stubby bunches of sea grass on their necks instead of heads. He did not run away, however, but dug the heels of his boots faster into the clay of the dike and rigidly watched the farcical riot that was kept up before his eyes in the falling dusk. “Are you here in our parts too?” he said in a hard voice. “You shall not chase me away!”

Not until darkness covered all things did he walk home with stiff, slow steps. But behind him he seemed to hear the rustling of wings and resounding screams. He did not look round, neither did he walk faster, and it was late when he came home. Yet he is said to have told neither his father nor anyone else about it. But many years after he took his feeble-minded little girl, with whom the Lord later had burdened him, out on the dike with him at the same time of day and year, and the same riot is said to have appeared then out on the sand flats. But he told her not to be afraid, that these things were only the herons and crows, that seemed so big and horrible, and that they were getting fish out of the open cracks.

God knows, the schoolmaster interrupted himself, there are all sorts of things on earth that could confuse a Christian heart, but Hauke was neither a fool nor a blockhead.

As I made no response, he wanted to go on. But among the other guests, who till now had listened without making a sound, only filling the low room more and more thickly with tobacco smoke, there arose a sudden stir. First one, then another, then all turned toward the window. Outside, as one could see through the uncurtained glass, the storm was driving the clouds, and light and dark were chasing one another; but it seemed to me too as if I had seen the haggard rider whiz by on his white horse.

“Wait a little, schoolmaster,” said the dikemaster in a low voice.

“You don’t need to be afraid, dikemaster,” laughed the little narrator. “I have not slandered him and have no reason to do so”—and he looked up at him with his small clever eyes.

“All right,” said the other. “Let your glass be filled again!” And when that had been done and the listeners, most of them with rather anxious faces, had turned to him again, he went on with his story:

Living thus by himself and liking best to associate only with sand and water and with scenes of solitude, Hauke grew into a long lean fellow. It was a year after his confirmation that his life was suddenly changed, and this came about through the old white Angora cat which old Trin Jans’s son, who later perished at sea, had brought her on his return from a voyage to Spain. Trin lived a good way out on the dike in a little hut, and when the old woman did her chores in the house, this monster of a cat used to sit in front of the house door and blink into the summer day and at the peewits that flew past. When Hauke went by, the cat mewed at him and Hauke nodded; both knew how each felt toward the other.

Now it was spring and Hauke, as he was accustomed to do, often lay out on the dike, already farther out near the water, between beach pinks and the fragrant sea-wormwood, and let the strong sun shine on him. He had gathered his pockets full of pebbles up on the higher land the day before, and when at low tide the sand flats were laid bare and the little gay strand snipes whisked across them screaming, he quickly pulled out a stone and threw it after the birds. He had practiced this from earliest childhood on, and usually one of the birds remained lying on the ground; but often it was impossible to get at it. Hauke had sometimes thought of taking the cat with him and training him as a retriever. But there were hard places here and there on the sand; in that case he ran and got his prey himself. On his way back, if the cat was still sitting in front of the house door, the animal would utter piercing cries of uncontrollable greed until Hauke threw him one of the birds he had killed.

To-day when he walked home, carrying his jacket on his shoulder, he was taking home only one unknown bird, but that seemed to have wings of gay silk and metal; and the cat mewed as usual when he saw him coming. But this time Hauke did not want to give up his prey—it may have been an ice bird—and he paid no attention to the greed of the animal. “Wait your turn!” he called to him. “To-day for me, to-morrow for you; this is no food for a cat!”

As the cat came carefully sneaking along, Hauke stood and looked at it: the bird was hanging from his hand, and the cat stood still with its paw raised. But it seemed that the young man did not know his cat friend too well, for, while he had turned his back on it and was just going on his way, he felt that with a sudden jerk his booty was torn from him, and at the same time a sharp claw cut into his flesh. A rage like that of a beast of prey shot into the young man’s blood; wildly he stretched out his arm and in a flash had clutched the robber by his neck.