When a child, who had listened to the old nurse, to the laborers, to the old men, stood at the window on a winter’s evening, it saw no clouds on the horizon without their being the pensioners; the stars were wax-candles, which were lighted at the old house at Borg; and the spinning-wheel which hummed in the next room was driven by old Ulrika Dillner. For the child’s head was filled with the people of those old days; it lived for and adored them.
But if such a child, whose whole soul was filled with stories, should be sent through the dark attic to the store-room for flax or biscuits, then the small feet scurried; then it came flying down the stairs, through the passage to the kitchen. For up there in the dark it could not help thinking of the wicked mill-owner at Fors,—of him who was in league with the devil.
Sintram’s ashes have been resting long in Svartsjö churchyard, but no one believes that his soul has been called to God, as it reads on his tombstone.
While he was alive he was one of those to whose home, on long, rainy Sunday afternoons, a heavy coach, drawn by black horses, used to come. A gentleman richly but plainly dressed gets out of the carriage, and helps with cards and dice to while away the long hours which with their monotony have driven the master of the house to despair. The game is carried on far into the night; and when the stranger departs at dawn he always leaves behind some baleful parting-gift.
As long as Sintram was here on earth he was one of those whose coming is made known by spirits. They are heralded by visions. Their carriages roll into the yard, their whip cracks, their voices sound on the stairs, the door of the entry is opened and shut. The dogs and people are awakened by the noise, it is so loud; but there is no one who has come, it is only an hallucination which goes before them.
Ugh, those horrible people, whom evil spirits seek out! What kind of a big black dog was it which showed itself at Fors in Sintram’s time? He had terrible, shining eyes, and a long tongue which dripped blood and hung far out of his panting throat. One day, when the men-servants had been in the kitchen and eaten their dinner, he had scratched at the kitchen door, and all the maids had screamed with fright; but the biggest and strongest of the men had taken a burning log from the fire, thrown open the door, and hurled it into the dog’s gaping mouth.
Then he had fled with terrible howls, flames and smoke had burst from his throat, sparks whirled about him, and his footprints on the path shone like fire.
And was it not dreadful that every time Sintram came home from a journey he had changed the animals which drew him? He left with horses, but when he came home at night he had always black bulls before his carriage. The people who lived near the road saw their great black horns against the sky when he drove by, and heard the creatures’ bellowing, and were terrified by the line of sparks which the hoofs and wheels drew out of the dry gravel.
Yes, the little feet needed to hurry, indeed, to come across the big, dark attic. Think if something awful, if he, whose name one may not say, should come out of a dark corner! Who can be sure? It was not only to wicked people that he showed himself. Had not Ulrika Dillner seen him? Both she and Anna Stjärnhök could say that they had seen him.