Still following the course of the stream, which, now that it was so near its mouth, grew more noisy and impatient, falling in many a miniature cascade as it hurried plashing and murmuring down the ravine, overgrown with huge clumps of ferns and the most luxuriant grass, Gotthold, a few moments after, reached the shore. On the right hand, almost at the extreme point of the promontory, which, covered with large and small stones like the rest of the coast, ran out several hundred paces into the sea, stood Cousin Boslaf's house. The old flag, which Gotthold had remembered from his boyhood, still fluttered from the tall staff on the gable roof. It had originally been a Swedish banner, but in the course of years the wind and weather had so dimmed its colors, and made so many repairs necessary, that the authorities could not have taken umbrage at this relic of foreign rule, even if they had troubled themselves particularly about Cousin Boslaf's actions. This, however, they had never done, so the old flag fluttered and rustled and flapped merrily in the fresh breeze, which blew still stronger as Gotthold now stood before the low dwelling, built partly of unhewn stone from the shore, whose only door was on the side towards the land. The door was locked; he could not look into the little iron-barred windows on the right and left, which lighted the kitchen and store-room, for they were considerably above a man's height, close under the roof; and the strong iron shutters were put over the two larger windows in the front of the house, which faced the sea. Evidently Cousin Boslaf was not at home. "To be sure," said Gotthold, "after an absence of ten years we can't be surprised not to find a man who was eighty years old at the time we left him." And yet he could not believe that the old man was dead. He had just been thinking of him so eagerly, seen him so distinctly in his mind's eye--the tall, slender figure, walking with long, regular strides, as he had so often beheld him. No, no, the old man belonged to the race of giants; he had surely outlived this little space of time. And then the house and its surroundings--the little front yard enclosed by a walk, the tiny garden bordered with shells--did not look as if they had been left for any length of time. Everything was in order and painfully neat, as the old man used to keep it; the little bridge in the creek to which he fastened his boat had even been lately mended with new pieces of wood, carefully dovetailed together. But the boat had gone; undoubtedly cousin Boslaf had rowed out to sea in her. To be sure, it was not his custom, but the old man's habits might have altered during the last few years.