"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.