"Trien' Jans," came a deep voice from the kitchen door and she started slightly. It was the dikegrave Hauke Haien who was leaning there against the post. "What are you saying to the child? Haven't I told you to keep your legends to yourself or to tell them to the geese and hens?"
The old woman looked at him with an angry glance and pushed the little girl away from her: "Those are no legends," she murmured half to herself, "my great-uncle told me that."
"Your great-uncle, Trien'? Why just now you said you had experienced it yourself!"
"It's all the same," said the old woman; "but you don't believe, Hauke Haien; I suppose you want to make my great-uncle out a liar." Then she drew nearer to the range and stretched her hands out over the flames in the grate.
The dikegrave threw a glance towards the window; it was scarcely dusk as yet outside. "Come, Wienke," he said and drew his feeble-minded child to him; "come with me; I want to show you something from out on the dike! Only we shall have to walk; the white horse is at the blacksmith's." Then he went with her into the living-room and Elke tied thick woolen shawls about the little girl's throat and shoulders; soon after her father took her out on the old dike towards the northwest, past Jeverssand, to where the flats lay broad before them almost farther than the eye could reach.
Part of the time he carried her, part of the time he led her by the hand; the twilight deepened gradually; in the distance everything disappeared in mist and vapor. But there, where one could still see, the invisibly swelling currents of the shallows had broken the ice, and, as Hauke had once seen it in his youth, smoking fog now rose from the cracks along which the uncanny, impish figures were once more to be seen hopping towards one another and bowing and suddenly stretching out wide, in a terrible fashion.
The child clung to her father in fear and covered her little face with his hand: "The sea-devils!" she whispered tremblingly between his fingers; "the sea-devils!"
He shook his head: "No, Wienke, neither water-women nor sea-devils; there are no such things; who told you about them?"
She looked up at him dully but did not answer. He stroked her cheeks tenderly: "Just look again," he said; "those are only poor hungry birds. Just see how the big one spreads his wings now; they are catching the fish that come into the steaming cracks."
"Fish," repeated Wienke.