Gradually the summer went by; the birds of passage had passed through, the air was empty of the song of the larks; only in front of the barns where they picked up grains of corn, while the threshing was going on, occasionally one or two could be heard as they flew away screeching; everything was already hard frozen. In the kitchen of the main house old Trien' Jans sat one afternoon on the wooden step of a stairway that led up from beside the range to the attic. During the last few weeks it seemed as if she had returned to life; she came gladly into the kitchen sometimes, and saw Elke at work there; there could no longer be any question of her legs not being able to carry her there, since one day when little Wienke had pulled her up there by her apron. Now the child knelt at her side and looked with her quiet eyes into the flames that flickered up out of the stove-hole. One of her little hands clasped the sleeve of the old woman, the other lay in her own pale blonde hair. Trien' Jans was telling a story: "You know," she said, "I was in your great grandfather's service as a housemaid and then I had to feed the pigs; he was cleverer than them all--then, it is terribly long ago, but one evening, the moon was shining and they closed the outer sluice and she could not get back into the sea. Oh, how she screamed and tore her hard shaggy hair with her little fish-hands! Yes, child, I saw it and heard her screaming myself! The ditches between the fens were all full of water and the moon shining on them made them sparkle like silver and she swam from one ditch into the other and lifted her arms and struck what were her hands together so that you could hear it a long way off, as if she wanted to pray; but, child, those creatures cannot pray. I was sitting in front of the door on a few beams that had been brought up there to be used in building, and looking far out across the fens; and the water-woman still swam in the ditches, and when she raised her arms they too glittered like silver and diamonds. At last I did not see her any more and the wild geese and gulls that I had not heard the whole time began to fly through the air again, hissing and cackling." The old woman ceased; the child had caught up one word. "Could not pray?" she asked. "What do you say? Who was it?" "Child," said the old woman, "it was the water-woman; those are accursed creatures who can never be saved." "Never be saved," repeated the child and her little breast heaved with a deep sigh as if she had understood that. "Trien' Jans," came a deep voice from the kitchen door and she started slightly. It was the dikegrave Hauke Haien who was leaning there against the post. "What are you saying to the child? Haven't I told you to keep your legends to yourself or to tell them to the geese and hens?" The old woman looked at him with an angry glance and pushed the little girl away from her: "Those are no legends," she murmured half to herself, "my great-uncle told me that."