The Bad Conscience

There once was an old man in Östgraninge named Jon Ivarsson. He was a contemporary of my father. As a young man, he was at sea, but then he came home and took over the farm from his father. He was melancholy and troubled, and in the evenings and at night, he always heard someone come and throw down shackles and chains out in the entryway. Then he used to say: "Oh, you're here now?" People believed that he had committed some crime at sea and was now being pursued by something invisible because of it. Finally, he went to a devout smith down by the Mill, and he helped him with this.