. 'Oh, no,'
exclaimed the daughters, 'for he skinned them, cut them in two, and
fried them.' 'Oh, they'll come back again,' the mother eel
persisted. 'No,' replied the daughters, 'for he ate them up.' 'They'll
come back again,' repeated the mother eel. 'But he drank brandy
after them,' said the daughters. 'Ah, then they'll never come back,'
said the mother, and she burst out crying, 'it's the brandy that
buries the eels.'"

"And therefore," said the eel-breeder in conclusion, "it is always
the proper thing to drink brandy after eating eels."

This story was the tinsel thread, the most humorous recollection
of Jurgen's life. He also wanted to go a little way farther out and up
the bay--that is to say, out into the world in a ship--but his
mother said, like the eel-breeder, "There are so many bad people--eel
spearers!" He wished to go a little way past the sand-hills, out
into the dunes, and at last he did: four happy days, the brightest
of his childhood, fell to his lot, and the whole beauty and
splendour of Jutland, all the happiness and sunshine of his home, were
concentrated in these. He went to a festival, but it was a burial
feast.

A rich relation of the fisherman's family had died; the farm was
situated far eastward in the country and a little towards the north.
Jurgen's foster parents went there, and he also went with them from
the dunes, over heath and moor, where the Skjaerumaa takes its
course through green meadows and contains many eels; mother eels
live there with their daughters, who are caught and eaten up by wicked
people. But do not men sometimes act quite as cruelly towards their
own fellow-men? Was not the knight Sir Bugge murdered by wicked
people? And though he was well spoken of, did he not also wish to kill
the architect who built the castle for him, with its thick walls and
tower, at the point where the Skjaerumaa falls into the bay? Jurgen
and his parents now stood there; the wall and the ramparts still
remained, and red crumbling fragments lay scattered around. Here it
was that Sir Bugge, after the architect had left him, said to one of
his men, "Go after him and say, 'Master, the tower shakes.' If he
turns round, kill him and take away the money I paid him, but if he
does not turn round let him go in peace." The man did as he was
told; the architect did not turn round, but called back "The tower
does not shake in the least, but one day a man will come from the west
in a blue cloak--he will