He was accompanied one autumn by his son Salve, a black-haired, dark-eyed, handsome lad, with a sharp, clever face, who had worked in the fishing-boats along the coast from his childhood almost, and had, in fact, been brought up amongst its sunken rocks and reefs and breakers.  He was something small in stature, perhaps; but what he wanted in robustness he made up in readiness and activity—­qualities which stood him in good stead in the many quarrels into which his too ready tongue was wont to bring him.  He was eighteen years old at this time; had been already engaged as an able seaman; and was in great request at the Sandvigen and Vraangen dances,—­a fact of which he was perfectly well aware.  Old Jacob’s granddaughter, being a little girl of only fourteen years of age, was of course altogether beneath his notice, and he didn’t condescend to speak to her.  He merely delivered himself of the witticism that she was like a heron; and with her thick, checked woollen handkerchief tied with the ends behind her waist, the resemblance was not so very far-fetched.  At any rate, he declared on the way home that such a specimen of womankind he, for his part, had never come across before, and that he would give anything to see her dancing in the public room with her thin arms and legs—­it would be like a grasshopper.

The next time he came, she took out her grandfather’s watch in its silver case and showed it to him, and some conversation passed between them.  His first impression of her was that she was stupid.  She asked questions about every sort of thing, and seemed to think that he must know everything.  And finally, she wanted to know what it was like on shore among the great folk of Arendal, and particularly how the ladies behaved.  It afforded him much amusement at the time to see with what simple credulity she took in everything he chose to invent on the subject; but after he had left he was not sure that he wasn’t sorry for what he had done, and at the same time he made the discovery that the girl, in her way, was anything but silly.

His remorse was to be brought home to him presently, for old Jacob had had duly recounted to him over again all his cock-and-bull stories, and was in high dudgeon.  When he came again the old man was very snappish to him, and he found it so unpleasant in the house that he made all the haste he could to get his business done.  While he was thus occupied, the little girl told him all about the Naiad, and the part her grandfather had taken in the action.  Salve, who was ruffled, and thought the old man had been an ill-mannered old dog, followed the relation from time to time with a sneering remark, which in her eagerness she didn’t notice, or didn’t understand.  But when he had finished what he had to do, he gave vent to his feelings in a way she did understand,—­he laughed incredulously.

“Old Jacob there on board the Naiad!  This is the first time anybody ever heard of it.”