"Yes, a Chinaman, too. How well you can guess! It may be that we still have one. He is dead now and buried in a little fenced-in plot of ground close by the churchyard. If you are not easily frightened I will show you his grave some day. It is situated among the dunes, with nothing but lyme grass around it, and here and there a few immortelles, and one always hears the sea. It is very beautiful and very uncanny."
"Oh, uncanny? I should like to know more about it. But I would better not. Such stories make me have visions and dreams, and if, as I hope, I sleep well tonight, I should certainly not like to see a Chinaman come walking up to my bed the first thing."
"You will not, either."
"Not, either? Upon my word, that sounds strange, as though, after all, it were possible. You seek to make Kessin interesting to me, but you carry it a trifle too far. And have you many such foreigners in Kessin?"
"A great many. The whole population is made up of such foreigners, people whose parents and grandparents lived in an entirely different region."
"Most remarkable. Please tell me more about them. But no more creepy stories. I feel that there is always something creepy about a Chinaman."
"Yes, there is," laughed Geert, "but the rest, thank heaven, are of an entirely different sort, all mannerly people, perhaps a little bit too commercial, too thoughtful of their own advantage, and always on hand with bills of questionable value. In fact, one must be cautious with them. But otherwise they are quite agreeable. And to let you see that I have not been deceiving you I will just give you a little sample, a sort of index or list of names."
"Please do, Geert."
"For example, we have, not fifty paces from our house, and our gardens are even adjoining, the master machinist and dredger Macpherson, a real Scotchman and a Highlander."
"And he still wears the native costume?"