d
the mother. 'Brandy buries eels.'

"And therefore one must always drink a little brandy after that dish,"
said the eel-man.

And this story made a great impression on little Joergen, and partly
influenced his life. He took the tinsel for the gold. He also wished
to go "a little way up the stream"--that is to say, to go away in a
ship to see the world--and his mother said as the eel-mother had done.
"There are many bad men--eel-spearers." But a little way beyond the
sand-hills, and a little way on the heath, he was allowed to go, he
begged so hard. Four happy days, however--days that seemed the
brightest among his childish years, turned up: he was to go to a large
meeting. What pleasure, although it was to a funeral!

A relation of the fisherman's family, who had been in easy
circumstances, was dead. The farm lay inland--"eastward, a little to
the north," it was said. The father and mother were both going, and
Joergen was to accompany them. On leaving the sand-hills, they passed
over heaths and boggy lands, until they came to the green meadows
where Skjaerumaa winds its way--the river with the numerous eels, where
the eel-mother with her daughters lived, those whom the cruel man
speared and cut in pieces, though there were men who had scarcely
treated their fellow-men better. Even Herr Bugge, the knight who was
celebrated in the old song, was murdered by a wicked man; and though
he was himself called so good, he wished to put to death the builder
who had built for him his castle, with its tower and thick walls, just
where Joergen and his foster-parents stood, where Skjaerumaa falls into
the Nissumfiord. The sloping bank or ascent to the ramparts was still
to be seen, and red fragments of the walls still marked out the
circumference of the ancient building. Here had Herr Bugge, when the
builder had taken his departure, said to his squire--"Follow him, and
say, Master, the tower leans to one side. If he turns, slay him on the
spot, and take the money from him that he got from me; but, if he does
not turn, let him go on in peace." And the squire overtook the
builder, and said what he was ordered to say; and the builder replied,
"The tower does not lean to one side, but by and by there will come
from the westward one in a blue cloak, and _he_ will make it bend." A
hundred years afterwards this prediction was fulfilled, for the German
Ocean rushed in, and the tower fell; but the then owner of the
property, Prebjoern Gyl