The white horse shook its head and neighed aloud over the sunny marshes, while the hired man was taking off the saddle and the boy ran with it to the harness-room; then it laid its head on its master's shoulder and suffered him to caress it. But when the hired man wanted to swing himself on its back, it leaped to the side with a sudden bound and then stood motionless, turning its beautiful eyes on its master. "Hallo, Iven," cried Hauke, "has he hurt you?" and he tried to help his man up from the ground. The latter was busily rubbing his hip: "No, sir, I can manage still; but let the devil ride that white horse!" "And me!" Hauke added, laughing. "Then bring him to the fens by the bridle." And when the man obeyed, somewhat humiliated, the white horse meekly let itself be led. A few evenings later the man and the boy stood together in front of the stable door. The sunset gleam had vanished behind the dike, the land it enclosed was already wrapped in twilight; only at rare intervals from far off one could hear the lowing of a startled bull or the scream of a lark whose life was ending through the assault of a weasel or a water rat. The man was leaning against the doorpost and smoking his short pipe, from which he could no longer see the smoke; he and the boy had not yet talked together. Something weighed on the boy's soul, however, but he did not know how to begin with the silent man. "Iven," he said finally, "you know that horse skeleton on Jeverssand." "What about it?" asked the man. "Yes, Iven, what about it? It isn't there any more? neither by day nor by moonlight; I've run up to the dike about twenty times." "The old bones have tumbled to pieces, I suppose," said Iven and calmly smoked on. "But I was out there by moonlight, too; nothing is moving over there on Jeverssand, either!" "Why, yes!" said the man, "if the bones have fallen apart, it won't be able to get up any more." "Don't joke, Iven! I know now; I can tell you where it is." The man turned to him suddenly: "Well, where is it, then?" "Where?" repeated the boy emphatically. "It is standing in our stable; there it has been standing, ever since it was no more on the island. It isn't for nothing that our master always feeds it himself; I know about it, Iven." For a while the man puffed away violently into the night. "You're not right in your mind, Carsten," he said then; "our white horse? If ever a horse was alive, that one is. How can a wide-awake youngster like you get mixed up with such an old wives' belief!" But the boy could not be converted: if the devil was inside the white horse, why shouldn't it be alive? On the contrary, it was all the worse. He started, frightened, every time that he stepped into the stable toward night, where the creature was sometimes kept in summer and it turned its fiery head toward him so violently. "The devil take you!" he would mutter; "we won't stay together much longer!"