"Good-night then," the day laborer called back as he trotted home along the dike. The servant looked round after him a few times, but the desire to see something uncanny kept him where he was. Then a dark, stocky figure came along the dike from the village towards him; it was the dikegrave's stable boy. "What do you want, Karsten?" the man called out to him. "I?--nothing," answered the boy; "but the master wants to speak to you, Iven Johns." The man had his eyes fixed on the islet again. "All right; I'm coming in a minute," he said. "What are you looking at?" asked the boy. The man raised his arm and pointed to the islet in silence. "Oh ho!" whispered the boy; "there's a horse--a white horse--it must be the devil who rides it--how does a horse get out there on Jevershallig?" "Don't know, Karsten; if only it's a real horse!" "Oh, yes, Iven; look, it's grazing just like a horse! But who took it out there; there isn't a boat big enough in the whole village! Perhaps after all it's only a sheep; Peter Ohm says, in the moonlight ten stocks of peat look like a whole village. No, look! Now it's jumping--it must be a horse!" The two stood for a time in silence, their eyes fixed on what they could see but indistinctly over there. The moon was high in the sky and shone down on the broad shallow sea whose rising tide was just beginning to wash over the glistening stretches of mud; no sound of any animal was to be heard all around, nothing but the gentle noise of the water; the marsh too, behind the dike, was empty; cows and oxen were all still in their stalls. Nothing was moving; the only thing that seemed to be alive was what they took to be a horse, a white horse, out on Jevershallig. "It's growing lighter," said the man breaking the silence; "I can see the white sheep bones shining clearly." "So can I," said the boy, stretching his neck; then, as if an idea had suddenly struck him, he pulled at the man's sleeve. "Iven," he whispered, "the horse's skeleton that always used to lie there, where is it? I can't see it!" "I don't see it either, that's queer!" said the man. "Not so very queer, Iven! Sometimes, I don't know in what nights, the bones are said to rise up and act as if they were alive." "So?" said the man; "that's old wives' superstition!" "May be, Iven," said the boy. "Well, I thought you came to fetch me; come on, we must go home. There's nothing new to see here." The boy would not move till the man had turned him round by force and pulled him onto the path. "Listen, Karsten," he said when the ghostly island was already a good bit behind them, "they say you're a fellow that's ready for anything; I believe you'd like best to investigate that yourself." "Yes," replied Karsten, shuddering a little at the recollection, "yes, I'd like to, Iven."