always wore an uneasy look, as though she were keeping watch. When a
boat came in, you ought to turn towards the sea, and spit, and mutter a
few words against sea-sprites. She could see every man's double. [The
spirit which every one is supposed to have as a follower and companion
through life.] On its account the door must be shut to quickly after any
one had gone out; and she could always hear a warning beforehand when
father was coming home from a journey.

When Anne Kvæn had no longer leave to go into the blue room to my
mother, she silently went through all kinds of performances outside the
door. I remember once standing on the stairs, and seeing her bowing and
curtseying, wetting her finger every now and then, drawing on the door
with it, and muttering, until I fled in terror.

In her incantation formulæ, the word "Jumala" often occurred, the name
of the Bjarmers' old god, whose memory, in the far north, is not so
completely eradicated as one would think, and who to this day has
perhaps some sacrificial stone or other on the wide mountain wastes of
Finland. Against Lap witchcraft--and a suspicion of it was fastened on
almost every Lap boat that landed at the quay--she also had her charms;
she apparently melted down Fin and Christian gods together in her
mystical incantations, for the confounding of Lap witchcraft.

In the midst of such mental impressions as these, I grew up.

The parsonage, with the white-towered church beside it, lay only a short
way from us, down by the sea, on the right-hand side of the bay, looking
out from our trading-place, which lay farther in.

There was a tutor in the place--we always called him "the student"--and