Nevertheless, though his parents didn’t like it at all, and even forbade it, Eilert used to sneak regularly down to the Finns.  There they had always strange tales to tell, and he heard wondrous things about the recesses of the mountains, where the original home of the Finns was, and where, in the olden time, dwelt the Finn Kings, who were masters among the magicians.  There, too, he heard tell of all that was beneath the sea, where the Mermen and the Draugs hold sway.  The latter are gloomy evil powers, and many a time his blood stood still in his veins as he sat and listened.  They told him that the Draug usually showed himself on the strand in the moonlight on those spots which were covered with sea-wrack; that he had a bunch of seaweed instead of a head, but shaped so peculiarly that whoever came across him absolutely couldn’t help gazing into his pale and horrible face.  They themselves had seen him many a time, and once they had driven him, thwart by thwart, out of the boat where he had sat one morning, and turned the oars upside down.  When Eilert hastened homewards in the darkness round the headland, along the strand, over heaps of seaweed, he dare scarcely look around him, and many a time the sweat absolutely streamed from his forehead.

In proportion as hostility increased among the old people, they had a good deal of fault to find with one another, and Eilert heard no end of evil things spoken about the Finns at home.  Now it was this, and now it was that.  They didn’t even row like honest folk, for, after the Finnish fashion, they took high and swift strokes, as if they were womenkind, and they all talked together, and made a noise while they rowed, instead of being “silent in the boat.”  But what impressed Eilert most of all was the fact that, in the Finnwoman’s family, they practised sorcery and idolatry, or so folks said.  He also heard tell of something beyond all question, and that was the shame of having Finn blood in one’s veins, which also was the reason why the Finns were not as good as other honest folk, so that the magistrates gave them their own distinct burial-ground in the churchyard, and their own separate “Finn-pens” in church.  Eilert had seen this with his own eyes in the church at Berg.

All this made him very angry, for he could not help liking the Finn folks down yonder, and especially little Zilla.  They two were always together:  she knew such a lot about the Merman.  Henceforth his conscience always plagued him when he played with her; and whenever she stared at him with her large black eyes while she told him tales, he used to begin to feel a little bit afraid, for at such times he reflected that she and her people belonged to the Damned, and that was why they knew so much about such things.  But, on the other hand, the thought of it made him so bitterly angry, especially on her account.  She, too, was frequently taken aback by his odd behaviour towards her, which she couldn’t understand at all; and then, as was her wont, she would begin laughing at and teasing him by making him run after her, while she went and hid herself.