“No one can ever get to the island there,” said one of our party, pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.

“I however know one!” said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar smile.

“Yes, my grandfather could!” said one of the boys, “scarcely any one besides has crossed during a hundred years.  The cross that is set up over there was placed there by my grandfather.  It had been a severe winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom.  Grandfather has told about it:  he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and returned.  But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise, just as if it were cannons.  The ice broke up and the elv came over the fields and forest.  It is true, every word I say!”

One of the travellers cited Tegner: 

    “Vildt Goeta stortade fran Fjallen,
     Hemsk Trollet fran sat Toppfall roet! 
     Men Snillet kom och spraengt stod Hallen,
     Med Skeppen i sitt skoet!”

“Poor mountain sprite,” he continued, “thy power and glory recede!  Man flies over thee—­thou mayst go and learn of him.”

The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to himself—­but we were just by the bridge before the inn.  The steam-boat glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.

“And that can be done!” said the old man.  He knew nothing at all about steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting all the pins and screws.  The course of the canal appeared to him to be something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite foreign objects to him:  he turned them and turned them—­for read I do not think he could.  But he knew all the particulars about the country—­that is to say, from olden times.

I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night.  He studied the passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake, away over the high-plain—­higher, continually higher—­he was in such activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater—­and then we reached Motala.

The Swedish author Tjoerneroes relates of himself, that when a child he once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him that it was one named “Bloodless.”  What brought the child’s pulse to beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollhaetta.