elt the shadow which this
form would one day cast across his life.

When he and Wilhelm immediately afterward returned to Sophie and Louise,
he related the unpleasant impression which the girl had made upon him.

"O, that is my Meg Merrilies!" exclaimed Sophie. "Yes, spite of her
youth, do you not find that she has something of Sir Walter Scott's
witch about her? When she grows older, she will be excellent. She has
the appearance of being thirty, whereas she is said not to be more than
twenty years old: she is a true giantess."

"The poor thing!" said Louise; "every one judges from the exterior. All
who are around her hate her, I believe, because her eyebrows are grown
together, and that is said to be a sign that she is a nightmare:

[Note: This superstition of the people is mentioned in
Thieles's Danish traditions: "When a girl at midnight
stretches between four sticks the membrane in which the foal
lies when it is born, and then creeps naked through it, she
will bear her child without pains; but all the boys she
conceives will become were-wolves, and all the girls
nightmares. You will know them in the daytime by their
eyebrows grown together over the nose. In the night she
creeps in through the key-hole, and places herself upon the
sleeper's bosom. The same superstition is also found in
German Grimm speaks thus about it: If you say to the
nightmare,--

Old hag, come to-morrow,
And I from you will borrow,

it retreats directly, and comes the next morning in the
shape of a man to borrow something."]

they are angry with her, and how could one expect, from the class to
which she belongs, that she should return scorn with kindness? She is
become savage, that she may not feel their neglect. In a few days, when
we have the mowing-feast, you yourself will see how every girl gets a
partner; but poor Sidsel may adorn herself as much as she likes, she
still stands alone. It is truly hard to be born such a being!"

"The unfortunate girl!" sighed Otto.

"O, she does not feel it!" said Wilhelm: "she cannot feel it; for that
she is too rude, too much of an animal."

CHAPTER X

"Were the pease not tender, and the vegetables fresh and
sweet as sugar What was the matter with the hams, the smoked
goose-breasts, and the herrings? What with the roasted lamb,
and the refreshing red-sprinkled head-lettuce? Was not