In the beginning Clement thought that he fared better in his old age than he had ever dared dream; but after a time he began to dislike the place terribly, especially while he was on watch duty.  It was all very well when visitors came into the cottage to look around, but some days Clement would sit for many hours all alone.  Then he felt so homesick that he feared he would have to give up his place.  He was very poor and knew that at home he would become a charge on the parish.  Therefore he tried to hold out as long as he could, although he felt more unhappy from day to day.

One beautiful evening in the beginning of May Clement had been granted a few hours’ leave of absence.  He was on his way down the steep hill leading out of Skansen, when he met an island fisherman coming along with his game bag.  The fisherman was an active young man who came to Skansen with seafowl that he had managed to capture alive.  Clement had met him before, many times.

The fisherman stopped Clement to ask if the superintendent at Skansen was at home.  When Clement had replied, he, in turn, asked what choice thing the fisherman had in his bag.  “You can see what I have,” the fisherman answered, “if in return you will give me an idea as to what I should ask for it.”

He held open the bag and Clement peeped into it once—­and again—­then quickly drew back a step or two.  “Good gracious, Ashbjoern!” he exclaimed.  “How did you catch that one?”

He remembered that when he was a child his mother used to talk of the tiny folk who lived under the cabin floor.  He was not permitted to cry or to be naughty, lest he provoke these small people.  After he was grown he believed his mother had made up these stories about the elves to make him behave himself.  But it had been no invention of his mother’s, it seemed; for there, in Ashbjoern’s bag, lay one of the tiny folk.

There was a little of the terror natural to childhood left in Clement, and he felt a shudder run down his spinal column as he peeped into the bag.  Ashbjoern saw that he was frightened and began to laugh; but Clement took the matter seriously.  “Tell me, Ashbjoern, where you came across him?” he asked.  “You may be sure that I wasn’t lying in wait for him!” said Ashbjoern.  “He came to me.  I started out early this morning and took my rifle along into the boat.  I had just poled away from the shore when I sighted some wild geese coming from the east, shrieking like mad.  I sent them a shot, but hit none of them.  Instead this creature came tumbling down into the water—­so close to the boat that I only had to put my hand out and pick him up.”

“I hope you didn’t shoot him, Ashbjoern?”

“Oh, no!  He is well and sound; but when he came down, he was a little dazed at first, so I took advantage of that fact to wind the ends of two sail threads around his ankles and wrists, so that he couldn’t run away.  ‘Ha!  Here’s something for Skansen,’ I thought instantly.”