Three days before the marriage, Olla arrived to help in the _Just Sixteen.

preparations. She was one of the handsomest girls in the neighborhood,

and besides her beauty was an heiress; for her father, whose only child

she was, owned large tracts of pasture on the mainland, as well as the

greater part of the island of Urk, where he had a valuable dairy. The

family crowded to the door to welcome Olla. She came in with Voorst, who

had rowed over to Urk for her,--tall, blooming, with flaxen tresses

hanging below her waist, and a pair of dancing hazel eyes fringed with

long lashes. Voorst was almost as good looking in his way,--they made a

very handsome couple.

"And this must be the stranger maiden of whom Voorst has so often told

me," said Olla after the first greetings had been exchanged. She smiled

at Ebba, and tried to take her hand, but the elfish creature frowned,

retreated, and, when Olla persisted, snatched her hand away with an

angry gesture and put it behind her back.

"Why does she dislike me so?" asked Olla, discomfited and grieved, for

she had meant to be kind.

"Oh, she doesn't dislike thee, she couldn't!" cried peace-loving

Jacqueline.

But Ebba did dislike Olla, though no one understood why. She would

neither go near nor look at her if she could help it, and when, in the

evening, she and Voorst sat on the doorstep talking together in low

tones, Ebba hastened out, placed herself between them, and tried to push

Olla away, uttering pitiful little wailing cries.

"What does ail her?" asked Jacqueline. Metje made no answer, but she

looked troubled. She felt that there was sorrow ahead for Ebba or for

Voorst, and she loved them both.

The wedding-day dawned clear and cloudless, as a marriage-day should.

Jacqueline in her bravery of stiff gilded head-dress with its long

scarf-like veil, her snowy bodice, and necklace of many-colored beads,

was a dazzling figure. Olla was scarcely less so, and she blushed and

dimpled as Voorst led her along in the bridal procession. Ebba walked

behind them. She, too, had been made fine in a scarlet bodice and a

grand cap with wings like that which Metje wore, but she did not seem to

care that she was so well dressed. Her sad eyes followed the forms of

Olla and Voorst, and as she limped painfully along after them, she

moaned continually to herself, a low, inarticulate, wordless murmur like

the sound of the sea.

Following the marriage-mass came the marriage-feast. Goodman Huyt sat at

the head of the table, the mother at the foot, and, side by side, the

newly-wedded pair. Opposite them sat Voorst and Olla. His expression of

triumphant satisfaction, and her blushes and demurely-contented glances,

had not been unobserved by the guests; so no one was very much surprised

when, in the midst of the festivity, the father rose, and knocked with

his tankard on the table to insure silence.

"Neighbors and kinsfolk, one marriage maketh another, saith the old

proverb, and we are like to prove it a true one. I hereby announce that,

with consent of parents on both sides, my son Voorst is troth-plight

with Olla the daughter of my old friend Tronk who sits here,"--slapping

Tronk on the shoulder,--"and I would now ask you to drink with me a

high-health to the young couple." Suiting the action to the word, he

filled the glass with Hollands, raised it, pronounced the toast, "A

High-Health to Voorst Huyt and to his bride Olla Tronk," and swallowed

the spirits at a draught.

Ebba, who against her will had been made to sit at the board among the

other guests, had listened to this speech with no understanding of its

meaning. But as she listened to the laughter and applause which followed

it, and saw people slapping Voorst on the back with loud congratulations

and shaking hands with Olla, she raised her head with a flash of

interest. She watched Voorst rise in his place with Olla by his side,

while the rest reseated themselves; she heard him utter a few sentences.

What they meant she knew not; but he looked at Olla, and when, after

draining his glass, he turned, put his arm round Olla's neck, drew her

head close to his own, and their lips met in a kiss, some meaning of the

ceremony seemed to burst upon her. She started from her seat, for one

moment she stood motionless with dilated eyes and parted lips, then she

gave a long wild cry and fled from the house.

"What is the matter? Who screamed?" asked old Huyt, who had observed

nothing.

"It is nothing. The poor dumb child over there," answered his wife.

Metje looked anxiously at the door. The duties of hospitality held her

to her place. "She will come in presently and I will comfort her," she

thought to herself.

But Ebba never "came in" again. When Metje was set free to search, all

trace of her had vanished. As suddenly and mysteriously as she had come

into their lives she had passed out of them again. No one had seen her

go forth from the door, no trace could be found of her on land or sea.

Only an old fisherman, who was drawing his nets that day at a little

distance from the shore, averred that just after high noon he had

noticed a shape wearing a fluttering garment like that of a woman pass

slowly over the ridge of the dike just where it made a sudden curve to

the left. He had had the curiosity to row that way after his net was

safely pulled in, for he wanted to see if there was a boat lying there,

or what could take any one to so unlikely a spot; but neither boat nor

woman could be found, and he half fancied that he must have fallen

asleep in broad daylight and dreamed for a moment.

However that might be, Ebba was gone; nor was anything ever known of her

again. Metje mourned her loss, all the more that Jacqueline's departure

left her with no mate of her own age in the household. Little Karen

cried for "Ebbe" for a night or two, the Vrow missed her aid in the

spinning, but Voorst, absorbed in his happiness, scarcely noted her

absence, and Olla was glad.

Gradually she grew to be a tradition of the neighborhood, handed down

from one generation to another even to this day, and nobody ever knew

whence she came or where she went, or whether it was a mortal maiden or

one of the children of the strange, solemn sea folk who was cast so

curiously upon the hands of the kindly Friesland family and dwelt in

their midst for two speechless years.

NOTE.--The tradition on which this story is founded, and which

is still held as true in some parts of Friesland, is referred to

by Parival in his book, "Les Delices de Hollande."

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Three days before the marriage, Olla arrived to help in the last