“Look!” said one at last, nodding up towards the head of the rock.  “Looks almost as if she was sitting there still, looking down into the river.”

Several nodded assent.

“Maybe there is someone sitting there.”

“Nay, ’tis only a bit of a bush or something.  But ’tis the very same spot where she sat, that’s true.”

“What’s the story?” asks one—­a newcomer, on his first trip to Nuolijoki.  “Some fairy tale or other?”

“Fairy tale?” one of the elders breaks in.  “You’re a stranger, young man, that’s plain to see.  ’Tis a true story enough, and not so long since it all happened neither.”

“Fourteen years,” says Antti, knocking the ashes from his pipe.  “I remember it all as plain as yesterday.  Ay, there’s queer things happen in life.”

“Did you see it yourself, then?”

“Ay, I did that—­and not likely to forget it.  ’Twas on that rock I saw her first time, and a young lad with her.”

Some of the men sat up and began filling their pipes afresh.

“Her betrothed, maybe?”

“Ay—­or something like it.  I didn’t know at the time.  I was clearing stray logs here on the shore, and saw them sitting up there together, looking at the water.  I sat down too for a bit, and lit a pipe, and thinking to myself; well, water’s water, and water it’ll be for all their looking.  Anyhow, I doubt they must look at something, just to pass the time.”

“Well, and what then?  What happened?”

“Nay, they did but sit there a bit and then went away.  But next day again, I was working there same as before, and there’s my young miss a-sitting there in the very spot—­only nobody with her this time.”

Olof had been lying on his back, hands under his head, looking up into the darkness.  All at once he sat up, and stared at the speaker.

“’Twas a queer girl, thinks I, and lights my pipe.  Walking all those miles out from the town to sit on a rock—­as if there wasn’t rocks enough elsewhere.  Anyway, ’twas no business of mine.  And after that she was there every day—­just about midday, always the same time, and always sitting just there in one place.”

“But what was she doing there?”

“Doing?  Nay, she wasn’t doing anything.  Just sitting there, and staring like.”

“’Twas Antti she was staring at—­that’ll be it,” laughed one.  “You must have been a fine young fellow those days, Antti!”

“You keep your tongue between your teeth, young fellow; ’tis no laughing matter I’m telling you.”

The men looked at one another, and nodded.  A faint breath of wind sighed through the trees on the slope, a pair of twin stems creaked one against the other with a melancholy sound.  The men puffed at their pipes.

“Well, there she sits, and never song nor word to hear.  Lord knows what she’d be thinking of all the time.  Then one day I came down to the river, and was going over to Metsamantila for some butter.  Just passing by the rock I was, and there she is all of a sudden, coming towards me, and all dressed in black from top to toe.”