Then she vanished altogether like a vision.

He was glad when he got down into his boat again, and pushed off and rode away.

But when he got out into the sound, and slackened speed a bit, he perceived that the ring still sat upon his finger.

His first thought was to tear it off and fling it into the sea; but then it sat tighter than ever.

It was so curiously wrought and fretted and engraved that he must needs examine it more curiously; and the longer he looked at it the stranger the gold whereof it was wrought gleamed and glistened.  Turn it as he would to examine its spirals, he could never make out where they began and where they ended.

But as he sat there and looked and looked at it, the black crackling and sparkling eyes of that pale face stood out more and more plainly before his eyes.  He didn’t exactly know whether he thought her ugly or handsome—­the uncanny creature!

The ring he now meant to keep, come what might.

And home he rowed, and said not a word to anybody of what had happened to him.

But from that day forth a strange restlessness came over him.

When he was sweeping out the shop or measuring goods, he would suddenly stand there in a brown study, and fancy he was right away at the landing-stage in the mountain-side, and the black woman was laughing at him over the meal-sack.

Out yonder he must needs venture once more, and put his ring to the test, though it cost him his life.

And in the course of the summer his boat lay over at the mountain-side in the self-same place as before.

When he had opened the drawer with his gold ring, he caught sight of the broad-shouldered woman.  Her eyes sparkled, and had a wild look about them, and she peered curiously at him.

And, every time he came, he seemed to be more expected, and she was more and more gladsome.  They became quite old acquaintances, and she was always waiting for him there.

But at home he grew gloomy and silent.  Yet, although he bethought him that it was all sorcery, and her arms were hairy almost like a beast’s, and although he determined and really tried to keep away, nevertheless he could not help going thither, and whenever he had been away from her a whole week, she grew quite unmanageable, and laughed and shrieked when she saw him coming again.

And he always heard the noise and the bustle of many people all about him, but never could he see anything.  It seemed to him, however, as if they all lay a little way off and pulled their boat aside for him to pass.  His boat, too, was always nicely baled out, and the oars and sails righted and trimmed.  The cable, too, was fastened for him whenever he came, and thrown to him whenever he went away.

Now and then she so managed it that he caught a glimpse into their warehouses and their bright halls in the mountain side, and at such times she seemed to be enticing him after her.  And then, on his way home, he would shudder.  “What,” thought he, “if the mountain wall were to shut to behind me?” and every time he was right glad that he had been so far on his guard and had come off scot free.