Then he went farther and lost sight of the river again. He came into a part of the forest which he had always thought dismal and bleak to wander through. There the ground was covered with big stone heaps, and gnarled pine stumps lay uprooted among them. If there was anything magical or fearsome in the forest, one would naturally think that it concealed itself here.
When the musician came in among the wild stone blocks, a shudder passed through him, and he began to wonder if it had not been unwise of him to boast in the presence of the Water-Sprite. He fancied the large pine roots began to gesticulate, as if they were threatening him. “Beware, you who think yourself cleverer than the Water-Sprite!” it seemed as if they wanted to say.
Lars Larsson felt how his heart contracted with dread. A heavy weight bore down upon his chest, so that he could scarcely breathe, and his hands became ice-cold. Then he stopped in the middle of the wood and tried to talk sense to himself.
“Why, there’s no musician in the waterfall!” said he. “Such things are only superstition and nonsense! It’s of no consequence what I have said or haven’t said to him.”
As he spoke, he looked around him, as if for some confirmation of the truth of what he said. Had it been daytime, every tiny leaf would have winked at him that there was nothing dangerous in the wood; but now, at night, the leaves on the trees were closed and silent and looked as though they were hiding all sorts of dangerous secrets.
Lars Larsson grew more and more alarmed. That which caused him the greatest fear was having to cross the stream once more before it and the road parted company and went in different directions. He wondered what the Water-Sprite would do to him when he walked across the last bridge—if he might perhaps stretch a big black hand out of the water and drag him down into the depths.
He had worked himself into such a state of fright that he thought of turning back. But then he would meet the stream again. And if he were to turn out of the road and go into the wood, he would also meet it, the way it kept bending and winding itself!
He felt so nervous that he didn’t know what to do. He was snared and captured and bound by that stream, and saw no possibility of escape.
Finally he saw before him the last bridge crossing. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the stream, stood an old mill, which must have been abandoned these many years. The big mill-wheel hung motionless over the water. The sluice-gate lay mouldering on the land; the millrace was moss-grown, and its sides were lined with common fern and beard-moss.
“If all had been as formerly and there were people here,” thought the musician, “I should be safe now from all danger.”
But, at all events, he felt reassured in seeing a building constructed by human hands, and, as he crossed the stream, he was scarcely frightened at all. Nor did anything dreadful happen to him. The Water-Sprite seemed to have no quarrel with him. He was simply amazed to think he had worked himself into a panic over nothing whatever.
He felt very happy and secure, and became even happier when the mill door opened and a young girl came out to him. She looked like an ordinary peasant girl. She had a cotton kerchief on her head and wore a short skirt and full jacket, but her feet were bare.
She walked up to the musician and said to him without further ceremony, “If you will play for me, I’ll dance for you.”
“Why, certainly,” said the fiddler, who was in fine spirits now that he was rid of his fear. “That I can do, of course. I have never in my life refused to play for a pretty girl who wants to dance.”
He took his place on a stone near the edge of the millpond, raised the violin to his chin, and began to play.
The girl took a few steps in rhythm with the music; then she stopped. “What kind of a polka are you playing?” said she. “There is no vim in it.”
The fiddler changed his tune; he tried one with more life in it.
The girl was just as dissatisfied. “I can’t dance to such a draggy polka,” said she.
Then Lars Larsson struck up the wildest air he knew. “If you are not satisfied with this one,” he said, “you will have to call hither a better musician than I am.”
The instant he said this, he felt that a hand caught his arm at the elbow and began to guide the bow and increase the tempo. Then from the violin there poured forth a strain the like of which he had never before heard. It moved in such a quick tempo he thought that a rolling wheel couldn’t have kept up with it.
“Now, that’s what I call a polka!” said the girl, and began to swing round.
But the musician did not glance at her. He was so astonished at the air he was playing that he stood with closed eyes, to hear better. When he opened them after a moment, the girl was gone. But he did not wonder much at this. He continued to play on, long and well, only because he had never before heard such violin playing.
“It must be time now to finish with this,” he thought finally, and wanted to lay down the bow. But the bow kept up its motion; he couldn’t make it stop. It travelled back and forth over the strings and jerked the hand and arm with it; and the hand that held the neck of the violin and fingered the strings could not free itself, either.
The cold sweat stood out on Lars Larsson’s brow, and he was frightened now in earnest.
“How will this end? Shall
