"Jan!" she cried out. And Jan had not heard her sound so frightened
since the day Lars threatened to take their home away from them.
"Can't you see there's some one sitting here?"

Jan turned and went back to Katrina. And now the two of them came
near taking to their heels; for, sure enough, propped against the
stone and almost covered with rim frost sat a giant troll, with a
bristly beard and a beak-like nose!

The troll, or whatever it was, sat quite motionless. It had become
so paralyzed from the cold that it had not been able to get back to
its cave, or wherever else it kept itself nowadays.

"Think that there really are such creatures after all!" said Katrina.
"I should never have believed it, for all I've heard so much about
them."

Jan was the first to recover his senses and to see what it was they
had come upon.

"It's no troll, Katrina," he said. "It's Agrippa Prästberg."

"Sakes alive!" gasped Katrina. "You don't tell me! From the look of
him he could easily be mistaken for a troll."

"He has just fallen asleep here," observed Jan. "He can't be dead,
surely!"

They shouted the old man's name and shook him; but he never stirred.