s,
whilst mighty steaming waterfalls roared and shook the ground.

All at once he felt as if his body were breaking loose, freeing itself,
and rising in the air. He had a feeling of infinite lightness, of a
wondrous capability for floating in higher atmospheres and recovering
equilibrium.

And, before he knew how it was, he found himself up on the earth again.

* * * * *

[1] _Hulder, huldre_, a name for anything elfin or gnomish. Compare
_Icel. Hulda_, a hiding, covering. It implies the invisibility of the
elfin race.

[2] _Ligorm_, serpent that eats the dead. If we have Lichfield and
lichgate, we may have lichworm too.

* * * * *

_FINN BLOOD_

[Illustration: _FINN BLOOD._]

FINN BLOOD

In Svartfjord, north of Senje, dwelt a lad called Eilert. His neighbours
were seafaring Finns, and among their children was a pale little girl,
remarkable for her long black hair and her large eyes. They dwelt behind
the crag on the other side of the promontory, and fished for a
livelihood, as also did Eilert's parents; wherefore there was no
particular goodwill between the families, for the nearest fishing ground
was but a small one, and each would have liked to have rowed there
alone.

Nevertheless, though his parents didn't like it at all, and even forbade
it, Eilert used to sneak regularly down to the Finns. There they had
always strange tales to tell, and he heard wondrous things about the
recesses of the mountains, where the original home of the Finns was, and
where, in the olden time, dwelt the Finn Kings, who were masters among
the magicians. There, too, he heard tell of all that was beneath the
sea, where the Mermen and the Draugs hold sway. The latter are gloomy
evil powers, and many a time his blood stood still in his veins as he
sat and listened. They told him that the Draug usually showed himself on
the strand in the moonlight on those spots which were covered with
sea-wrack; that he had a bunch of seaweed instead of a head, but shaped
so peculiarly that whoever came across him absolutely couldn't help
gazing into his pale and horrible face. They themselves had seen him
many a time, and once they had driven him, thwart by thwart, out of the
boat where he had sat one morning, and turned the oars upside down. When
Eilert hastened homewards in the darkness round the headland, along the
strand, over heaps of seaweed, he dare scarcely look ar