Book 2 — THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE (continued 2)

When the new year had come, there was a wedding; the bride was a relative of the Haiens, and Hauke and Elke were both invited. Indeed, at the wedding dinner it happened that, because a nearer relative was absent, they found themselves seated side by side. Their joy about this was betrayed only by a smile that flitted over the face of each. But Elke to-day sat with indifference in the midst of the noise of chattering and the click of the glasses.

"Is something ailing you?" asked Hauke.

"Oh, really nothing; only there are too many people here for me."

"But you look so sad!"

She shook her head; then again she said nothing.

Then something like jealousy rose within him on account of her silence, and secretly, under the overhanging tablecloth, he seized her hand. She did not draw it away, but clasped it, as if full of confidence, round his. Had a feeling of loneliness come over her, as she had to watch the failing body of her father every day? Hauke did not think of asking her this; but his breathing stopped, as he pulled the gold ring from his pocket. "Will you let it stay?" he asked trembling, while he pushed the ring on the ring-finger of the slender hand.

Opposite them at the table sat the pastor's wife; she suddenly laid down her fork and turned to her neighbor: "My faith, look at that girl!" she cried; "she is turning deadly pale!"

But the blood was returning into Elke's face. "Can you wait, Hauke?" she asked in a low voice.

Clever Frisian though he was, he nevertheless had to stop and think a few seconds. "For what?" he asked then.

"You know perfectly well; I don't need to tell you."

"You are right," he said; "yes, Elke, I can wait--if it's within a human limit."

"Oh, God, I'm afraid, a very near one! Don't talk like that, Hauke; you are speaking of my father's death!" She laid her other hand on her breast; "Till then," she said, "I shall wear the gold ring here; you shan't be afraid of getting it back in my lifetime!"

Then both smiled, and their hands pressed each other so tightly that on other occasions the girl would have cried out aloud.

The pastor's wife meanwhile had looked incessantly at Elke's eyes, which were now glowing like dark fire under the lace fringe of her little gold brocade cap. But in the growing noise at the table she had not understood a word; neither did she turn to her partner again, for she was accustomed not to disturb budding marriages--and this seemed to be such a case--if only for the sake of the promise of the wedding-fee for her husband, who did the marrying.

Elke's presentiment had come true; one morning after Easter the dikemaster Tede Volkerts had been found dead in his bed. When one looked at his face, one could see written upon it that his end had been calm. In the last months he had often expressed a weariness of life; his favorite roast, even his ducks, wouldn't please him any more.

And now there was a great funeral in the village. Up on the high land in the burying-ground round the church there was on the western side a burial-place surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Upright against a weeping willow stood a broad blue tombstone upon which was hewn the image of death with many teeth in the skeleton jaws; beneath it one could read in large letters:

It was the burial-place of the former dikemaster Volkert Tedsen; now a new grave had been dug in which his son, Tede Volkerts, was to be buried. And now the funeral procession was coming up from the marshes, a multitude of carriages from all parish villages. Upon the first one stood the heavy coffin, and the two shining black horses of the dikemaster's stable drew it up the sandy hill to the high land; their tails and manes were waving in the sharp spring breeze. The graveyard round the church was filled with people up to the ramparts; even on the walled gate boys were perching with little children in their arms; all wanted to see the burying.

In the house down in the marshes Elke had prepared the funeral meal in the best parlour and the living-room. Old wine was set on the table in front of the plates; by the plate of the dikemaster general--for he, too, was not missing today--and of the pastor there was a bottle of "Langkork" for each. When everything was ready, she went through the stable in front of the yard door; she met no one on the way, for the hired men were at the funeral with two carriages. Here she stood still and while her mourning clothes were waving in the spring wind, she watched the last carriages down in the village drive up to the church. There after a while a great turmoil appeared, which seemed to be followed by a deadly silence. Elke folded her hands; now they must be letting the coffin into the grave: "And to dust thou shalt return!" Inevitably, in a low voice, as if she could have heard them from up here, she repeated the words. Then her eyes filled with tears, her hands folded across her breast sank into her lap. "Our Father, who art in heaven!" she prayed ardently. And when the Lord's prayer was finished, she stood a long time motionless--she, now the mistress of this great marsh farm; and thoughts of death and of life began to struggle within her.

A distant rumbling waked her. When she opened her eyes, she again saw one carriage after another drive rapidly down from the marshes and up to her farm. She straightened herself, looked ahead sharply once more and then went back, as she had come, through the stable into the solemnly ordered living-rooms. Here too there was nobody; only through the wall could she hear the bustle of the maids in the kitchen. The festive board looked so quiet and deserted; the mirror between the windows had been covered with white scarfs, and likewise the brass knobs of the stove: there was nothing bright any more in the room. Elke saw that the doors of the alcove-bed, in which her father had slept his last sleep were open and she went up and closed them fast. Almost absently she read the proverb that was written on them in golden letters between roses and carnations:

That was from her grandfather! She cast a glance at the sideboard; it was almost empty. But through the glass doors she could still see the cut-glass goblet which her father, as he used to tell with relish, had once won as a prize when riding the ring in his youth. She took it out and set it in front of the dikemaster general's plate. Then she went to the window, for already she heard the carriages drive up the hill; one after the other they stopped in front of her house, and, more briskly than they had come, the guests leaped from their seats to the ground. Rubbing their hands and chattering, all crowded into the room; it was not long before they sat down at the festive board, where the well-prepared dishes were steaming--in the best parlor the dikemaster general and the pastor. And noise and loud talking ran along the table, as if death had never spread its awful stillness here. Silent, with her eyes upon her guests, Elke walked round the tables with her maids, to see that nothing was missing at the funeral meal. Hauke Haien, too, sat in the living-room with Ole Peters and other small landowners.

When the meal was over, the white pipes were taken out of the corner and lighted, and Elke was again busy offering the filled coffee cups to her guests; for there was no economy in coffee, either, on this day. In the living-room, at the desk of the man just buried, the dikemaster general stood talking with the pastor and the white-haired dike overseer Jewe Manners.

"Well, gentlemen," said the former; "we have buried the old dikemaster with honor; but where shall we get the new one? I think, Manners, you will have to make up your mind to accept this dignity."

Old Manners smiled and lifted his little black velvet cap from his white hair: "Mr. Dikemaster General," he said, "the game would be too short then; when the deceased Tede Volkers was made dikemaster I was made overseer and have been now for forty years."

"That is no defect, Manners; then you know the affairs all the better and won't have any trouble with them."

But the old man shook his head: "No, no, your Honor, leave me where I am, then I can run along with the rest for a few years longer."

The pastor agreed with him: "Why not give the office," he said, "to the man who has actually managed the affairs in the last years?"

The dikemaster general looked at him: "I don't understand you, pastor!"

But the pastor pointed with his finger to the best parlor, where Hauke in a slow serious manner seemed to be explaining something to two older people. "There he stands," he said; "the long Frisian over there with the keen grey eyes, the bony nose and the high, projecting forehead. He was the old man's hired man and now has his own little place; to be sure, he is rather young."

"He seems to be about thirty," said the dikemaster general, inspecting the man thus presented to him.

"He is scarcely twenty-four," remarked the overseer Manners; "but the pastor is right: all the good work that has been done with dikes and sluices and the like in the last years through the office of dikemaster has been due to him; the old man couldn't do much toward the end."

"Indeed?" said the dikemaster general; "and you think, he would be the right man to move up into the office of his old master?"

"He would be absolutely the right man," replied Jewe Manners; "but he lacks what they call here 'clay under one's feet;' his father had about fifteen, he may well have twenty acres; but with that nobody has yet been made dikemaster."

The pastor had already opened his mouth, as if he wanted to object, when Elke Volkers, who had been in the room for a while, spoke to them suddenly: "Will your Honor allow me a word?" she said to the dikemaster general; "I am speaking only to prevent a mistake from turning into a wrong."

"Then speak, Miss Elke," he replied; "wisdom always sounds well from the lips of pretty girls."

"It isn't wisdom, your Honor; I only want to tell the truth."

"That too one must be able to hear, Miss Elke."

The girl let her dark eyes glance sideways, as if she wanted to make sure that there were no superfluous ears about: "Your Honor," she began then, and her breast heaved with a stronger motion, "my godfather, Jewe Manners, told you that Hauke Haien owned only about twenty acres; that is quite true in this moment, but as soon as it will be necessary, Hauke will call his own just so many more acres as my father's, now my own farm, contains. All that together ought to be enough for a dikemaster."

Old Manners stretched his white head toward her, as if he had to see who was talking there: "What is that?" he said; "child, what are you talking about?"

But Elke pulled a gleaming gold ring on a black ribbon out of her bodice: "I am engaged, godfather Manners," she said; "here is my ring, and Hauke Haien is my betrothed."

"And when--I think I may ask that, as I held you at your baptism, Elke Volkerts--when did that happen?"

"That happened some time ago; but I was of age, godfather Manners," she said; "my father's health had already fallen off, and as I knew him, I thought I had better not get him excited over this; now that he is with God, he will see that his child is in safekeeping with this man. I should have kept still about it through the year of mourning; but for the sake of Hauke and of the diked-in land, I had to speak." And turning to the dikemaster general, she added: "Your Honor will please forgive me."

The three men looked at one another; the pastor laughed, the old overseer limited himself to a "hm, hm!" while the dikemaster general rubbed his forehead as if he were about to make an important decision. "Yes, dear miss," he said at last, "but how about marriage property rights here in this district? I must confess I am not very well versed in these things at this moment in all this confusion."

"You don't need to be, your Honor," replied the daughter of the dikemaster, "before my wedding I shall make my goods over to my betrothed. I have my little pride too," she added smiling; "I want to marry the richest man in the village."

"Well, Manners," said the pastor, "I think you, as godfather, won't mind if I join the young dikemaster with the old one's daughter!"

The old man shook his head gently: "Our Lord give His blessing!" he said devoutly.

But the dikemaster general gave the girl his hand: "You have spoken truly and wisely, Elke Volkerts; I thank you for your firm explanations and hope to be a guest in your house in the future, too, on happier occasions than today. But that a dikemaster should have been made by such a young lady--that is the wonderful part of this story!"

"Your Honor," replied Elke and looked at the kindly high official with her serious eyes, "a true man ought to be allowed the help of his wife!" Then she went into the adjoining parlor and laid her hand silently in that of Hauke Haien.

Several years had gone by: in the little house of Tede Haien now lived a vigorous workman with his wife and child; the young dikemaster Hauke Haien lived with his wife Elke Volkerts on the farm of her father. In summer the mighty ash tree murmured as before in front of the house; but on the bench that now stood beneath it, the young wife was usually seen alone in the evening, sitting with some sewing in her hands; there was no child yet from this marriage. The husband had other things to do than to sit in front of his house door, for, in spite of his having helped in the old man's management before, there was still a multitude of labors to be done which, in those other times, he had not found it wise to touch upon; but now everything had to be cleared up gradually, and he swept with a stiff broom. Besides that, there was the management of the farm, enlarged by his own land, especially as he was trying to save a second hired man. So it came about that, except on Sundays, when they went to church, the two married people saw each other usually only during dinner, which Hauke ate with great haste, and at the rise and close of day; it was a life of continuous work, although one of content.

Then a troublesome rumor started. When one Sunday, after church, a somewhat noisy company of young landowners from the marshes and the higher land had stayed over their cups at the inn, they talked, when it came to the fourth and fifth glass, not about the king and the government, to be sure--they did not soar so high in those days--but about communal and higher officials, specially about the taxes demanded of the community. And the longer they talked, the less there was that found mercy in their eyes, particularly not the new dike taxes. All the sluices and locks had always held out before, and now they have to be repaired; always new places were found on the dike that required hundreds of cartloads of earth--the devil take the whole affair!

"That's all on account of your clever dikemaster," cried one of the people of the higher land, "who always goes round pondering and sticks his finger into every pie!"

"Yes, he is tricky and wants to win the favor of the dikemaster general; but we have caught him!"

"Why did you let him be thrust on you?" said the other; "now you have to pay in cash."

Ole Peters laughed. "Yes, Marten Fedders, that's the way it is here, and it can't be helped: the old one was made dikemaster on account of his father, the new one on account of his wife." The laughter which ran round the table showed how this sally was appreciated.

But as it had been spoken at the public table of an inn, it did not stay there, and it was circulated in the village of the high land as well as that of the marshes below; and so it reached Hauke. Again the row of ill-meaning faces passed by his inner eye, and he heard the laughter round the tavern table more jeering than it really was. "Dogs!" he shouted, and his eyes looked grimly to the side, as if he wanted to have these people whipped.

Then Elke laid her hand upon his arm: "Let them be; they all would like to be what you are."

"That's just it," he replied angrily.

"And," she went on, "didn't Ole Peters better himself by marriage?"

"He did, Elke; but what he married with Vollina wasn't enough to be dikemaster on."

"Say rather: he wasn't enough," and Elke turned her husband round so that he had to look into the mirror, for they stood between the windows in their room. "There is the dikemaster!" she said; "now look at him; only he who can manage an office has it."

"You're not wrong," he replied pensively, "and yet--Well, Elke, I have to go to the eastern lock; the gates won't close again."

He went; but he was not gone long, before the repairing of the lock was forgotten. Another idea, which he had only half thought out and carried round with him for years, which, however, had been pushed back by the urgent affairs of his office, now took hold of him again and more powerfully than before, as if he had suddenly grown wings.

Before he was really aware of It himself, he found himself on the sea-dike a good way south toward the city; the village that lay on this side had some time ago vanished to the left. He was still walking on, fixing his eyes constantly on the seaward side of the broad foreland. If some one had walked beside him, he must have seen what concentrated mental work was going on behind those eyes. At last he stood still: the foreland here dwindled into a narrow strip along the dike. "It will have to work!" he said to himself. "Seven years in the office--they shan't say any more that I am dikemaster only because of my wife."

He was still standing there, and his eyes swept sharply and thoughtfully on all sides over the green foreland. Then he walked back until, here too, the broad plain that lay before him ended in a narrow strip of green pastureland. Through this, close by the dike, shot a strong arm of the sea which divided almost the whole foreland from the mainland and made it an island; a crude wooden bridge led to it, so that one could go back and forth with cattle or teams of hay or grain. It was low tide now, and the golden September sun was glistening on the strip of wet clay, about a hundred feet broad, and on the deep channel in the middle of it through which the sea was even now driving its waters. "That can be damned!" said Hauke to himself, after he had watched this playing of the water for a while. Then he looked up, and on from the dike upon which he stood, past the channel, he drew an imaginary line along the edge of the isolated land, round toward the south and back again to the east over the eastern continuation of the channel, up to the dike. But the line which he had drawn invisibly was a new dike, new also in the construction of its outline, which as yet existed only in his head.

"That would make dammed-in land of about a thousand acres," he said smiling to himself; "not so large; but--"

Another calculation came into his mind: the foreland here belonged to the community, or rather, a number of shares to the single members, according to the size of their property in the municipality or other legal income. He began to count up how many shares he had received from his father and how many from Elke's father, and how many he had already bought during his marriage, partly with a dim foreboding of future gain, partly because of his increased sheep stock. It was a considerable lot; for he had also bought all of Ole Peter's shares when the latter had been disgusted because his best ram had been drowned, once when the foreland had been partly flooded. What excellent pasture and farm land that must make and how valuable it would be if it were all surrounded by his new dike! Like intoxication this idea rose into his brain; but he pressed his nails into the hollows of his hands and forced his eyes to see clearly and soberly what lay there before him: a great plain without a dike exposed to who knew what storms and floods in the next years, and at its outermost edge a herd of dirty sheep now wandering and grazing slowly. That meant a heap of work, struggle, and annoyance for him! In spite of all that, as he was walking on the footpath down from the dike across the fens toward his hill, he felt as if he were carrying home a great treasure.

In the hall Elke came to meet him: "How about the lock?" she asked.

He looked down at her with a mysterious smile: "We shall soon need another lock," he said; "and sluices and a new dike."

"I don't understand," returned Elke, as they walked into the room; "what do you want to do, Hauke?"

"I want," he began slowly and then stopped for a second, "I want the big foreland that begins opposite our place and stretches on westward to be diked in and made into a solid enclosure. The high floods have left us in peace for almost a generation now; but when one of the bad ones comes again and destroys the growth down there--then all at once there'll be an end to all this glory. Only the old slackway has let things stay like this till to-day."

She looked at him with astonishment: "Why, you are scolding yourself!" she said.

"I am, Elke; but till now there were so many other things to do."

"Yes, Hauke; surely, you have done enough."

He had sat down in the armchair of the old dikemaster, and his hands were clutching both arms fast.

"Have you the courage for it?" his wife asked him.

"I have that, Elke," he spoke hastily.

"Don't be too hasty, Hauke; that work is a matter of life and death; and almost all the people will be against you, they won't thank you for your labor and trouble."

He nodded. "I know that!" he said.

"And if it will only succeed," she cried again, "ever since I was a child I heard that the channel can't be stopped up, and that therefore one shouldn't touch it."

"That was an excuse for the lazy ones!" said Hauke; "why shouldn't one be able to stop up the channel?"

"That I have not heard; perhaps because it goes right through; the rush of the water is too strong." A remembrance came over her and an almost mischievous smile gleamed out of her serious eyes: "When I was a child," she told, "I heard our hired men talk about it once; they said, if a dam was to hold there, some live thing would have to be thrown into the hole and diked up with the rest; when they were building a dike on the other side, about a hundred years ago, a gipsy child was dammed in that they had bought from its mother for a lot of money. But now I suppose no one would sell her child."

Hauke shook his head: "Then it is just as well that we have none; else they would do nothing less than demand it of us."

"They shouldn't get it!" said Elke and folded her arms across her body as if in fear.

And Hauke smiled; but she asked again: "And the huge cost? Have you thought of that?"

"I have, Elke; what we will get out of it will far surpass the cost; even the cost of keeping up the old dike will be covered a good bit by the new one. We do our own work and there are over eighty teams of horses in the community, and there is no lack of young strong arms. At least you shan't have made me dikemaster for nothing, Elke; I want to show them that I am one!"

She had been crouching in front of him and looking at him full of care; now she rose with a sigh. "I have to go back to my day's work," she said, and gently stroked his cheek; "you do yours, Hauke."

"Amen, Hike!" he said with a serious smile; "there is work enough for us both."

There was truly work enough for both, but the heaviest burden was now on the man's shoulder. On Sunday afternoons, often too in the evenings, Hauke sat together with a good surveyor, deep in calculations, drawings and plans; when he was alone, he did the same and often did not stop till long after midnight. Then he would slip into their common sleeping-room--for the stuffy beds fixed to the wall in the living-room were no longer used in Hauke's household--and his wife would lie with her eyes closed, pretending to sleep, so that he would get his rest at last, although she was really waiting for him with a beating heart. Then he would sometimes kiss her forehead and say a low word of love, and then lie down to sleep, though sleep often did not come to him before the first crowing of the cock. In the winter storms he ran out on the dike with pencil and paper in his hand, and stood and made drawings and took notes while a gust of wind would tear his cap from his head and make his long, light hair fly round his heated face. Soon, as long as the ice did not bar his way, he rowed with a servant out into the sea and with plumb line and rods measured the depths of the currents about which he was not yet sure. Often enough Elke trembled for his life, but when he was safely back, he could hardly have noticed anything, except by the tight clasp of her hand or by the bright lightning that gleamed from her usually so quiet eyes. "Have patience, Elke," he said once when it seemed to him as if his wife would not let him alone; "I have to have the whole thing clear to myself before I propose it." Then she nodded and let him be. There were no less rides into the city, either, to see the dikemaster general, and all these and the labors for house and farm were always followed by work late into the night. His intercourse with other people outside of his work and business vanished almost entirely; even with his wife it grew less and less. "These are bad times, and they will last long yet," said Elke to herself and went to her work.

At last, when sun and spring winds had broken the ice everywhere, the last work in preparation had been done. The petition to the dikemaster general, to be seconded by a higher official, contained the proposal that the foreland should be diked for the promoting of the general weal, particularly of the diked-in district, as well as the ruler's treasury, as this would receive in a few years the taxes from about a thousand acres. This was neatly copied and put into a firm envelope together with the corresponding drafts and plans of all the positions, present and future, of the locks and sluices and everything else that belonged to the project; and this was sealed with the official seal of the dikemaster.

"Here it is, Elke," said the young dikemaster; "now give it your blessing."

Elke laid her hand into his: "We want to stand by each other," she said.

"Yes, we do."

Then the petition was sent into the city by a messenger on horseback.

I must call your attention to the fact, dear sir, the schoolmaster interrupted his account, fixing his eyes pleasantly upon me, that what I have told you up to this point I have gathered during my activity of almost forty years in this district from the traditions of intelligent people or from the tales of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What I am about to tell you now, so that you may find the right connection between what has gone before and the final outcome of my story, used to be and is still the talk of the whole marsh village, as soon as the spinning-wheels begin to whir round All Saints' Day.

If one stood on the dike, about five or six hundred feet to the north of the dikemaster's farm, one could, at that time, look a few thousand feet out over the sea, and somewhat farther from the opposite shore one could see a little island, which they called "Jeverssand," or "Jevers Island." Our forefathers of that generation had used it as a pasture for sheep, for at that time grass was still growing on it; but even that had stopped, because the low island had several times been flooded by the sea, and in midsummer too, so that the growth of grass was stunted and made useless as a sheep pasture. So it happened that the island had no more visitors except gulls and other birds and occasionally a sea eagle; and on moonlight nights from the dike one could only see the light or heavy mists pass over it. And people believed that, when the moon shone upon the island from the east, they could recognise a few bleached skeletons of drowned sheep and that of a horse, although, to be sure, no one could understand how it had come there.

It was at the end of March that the day laborer from the house of Tede Haien and Iven Johns, the hired man of the young dikemaster, stood beside each other at that place and without stirring stared at the island which could scarcely be recognised in the dim moonshine; but something out of the ordinary seemed to hold them there. The laborer put his hands into his pockets and shuddered: "Come, Iven," he said; "there's nothing good in that; let us go home."

The other laughed, even though horror sounded through his laughter: "Oh, bosh, it's a live creature, a big one! Who the devil has chased it on to the clay out there? Look, now it's stretching its neck our way! No, it's drooping its head; it is feeding. I'd have thought, there was nothing to feed on there! What can it be?"

"That's not our business!" replied the other. "Good night, Iven, if you don't want to go with me; I'm going home!"

"Oh, yes; you've got a wife, you can go into your warm bed! But I've got a lot of March air in my room!"

"Good night, then," the laborer called back, as he marched home on the dike. The hired man looked round a few times after his fleeing companion; but the desire to see something gruesome held him fast. Then a dark, stocky figure came toward him on the dike from the village; it was the servant boy of the dikemaster. "What do you want, Carsten?" the hired man called to him.

"I?--nothing," said the boy; "but our master wants to speak to you, Iven Johns."

The man's eyes were drawn back to the island again. "All right, I'm coming right off," he said.

"What are you looking at so?" asked the boy.

The man raised his arm and pointed silently to the island. "Oh, look!" whispered the boy; "there goes a horse--a white horse--the devil must be riding that--how can a horse get to Jevers Island?"

"Don't know, Carsten; if it's only a real horse!"

"Yes, yes, Iven; look, now it's feeding just like a horse! But who has brought it there--we have no boats in the village big enough! Perhaps it's only a sheep; Peter Ohm says by moonlight ten circles of peat look like a whole village. No, look! Now it's jumping around--it must be a horse, after all!"

Both stood silent for a while, their eyes fixed on what they saw indistinctly going on upon yonder island. The moon stood high in the heavens and shone upon the wide sea that was just beginning, as the tide rose, to wash with its waters over the glistening flats of clay. Only the low murmur of the water, not the sound of a single animal was heard here in the vast open; on the marshes behind the dike, too, all was deserted, and cows and oxen were still in their stalls. Nothing stirred; only the thing that they took for a horse--a white horse--seemed to be moving on Jevers Island. "It is growing lighter," the hired man broke into the silence; "I can see the white sheeps' skeletons shimmer distinctly!"

"I too," said the boy and stretched his neck; but then, as if it came over him suddenly, he pulled the man by the sleeve. "Iven," he gasped, "the horse skeleton, that used to lie there too--where is that? I can't see it!"

"I don't see it either. Strange!" said the man.

"Not so strange, Iven! Sometimes, I don't know in what nights, the bones are supposed to rise and act as if they were alive!"

"Is that so?" said the man; "that's an old wives' story!"

"May be, Iven," said the boy.

"But I thought you were sent to get me. Come, we have to go home. It always stays the same, anyway."

The man could not get the boy away until he had turned him round by force and pushed him on to the way. "Listen, Carsten," said the former, when the ghostly island lay a good way behind him, "you are supposed to be a good sport; I believe you would like to inspect these doings yourself."

"Yes," replied Carsten, still shuddering a little. "Yes, I'd like to do that, Iven."

"Do you really mean that? Then," said the man after he had given his hand to the boy emphatically, "we'll take our boat to-morrow evening; you row to Jeverssand; I'll stay on the dike in the meantime."

"Yes," replied the boy, "that'll work! I'll take my whip with me."

"Do that."

Silently they came near the house of their employers, to which they slowly climbed up the high hill.

At the same hour on the following night the hired man sat on the big stone in front of the stable door, when the boy came to him, snapping his whip. "What a strange sound!" said the former.

"I should say--take care!" returned the boy; "I have stuck nails into the string, too."

"Then come," said the other.

As on the night before, the moon stood in the eastern sky and looked down with a clear light. Soon both were out on the dike again and looked over to Jevers Island, that looked like a strip of mist in the water. "There it goes again," said the man; "I was here in the afternoon, and then it wasn't there; but I saw the white horse skeleton lying there distinctly!"

The boy stretched his neck: "That isn't there now, Iven," he whispered.

"Well, Carsten, how is it?" said the man. "Are you still keen on rowing over?"

Carsten stopped to think a moment; then he struck the air with his whip: "Go ahead and slip the mooring, Iven."

But over yonder it seemed as if the creature moving there were stretching its neck and raising its head toward the mainland. They were not seeing it any more; they were already walking down the dike to the place where the boat was moored. "Now get in," said the man, after he had slipped the mooring. "I'll wait till you are back. You'll have to land on the eastern side; that's where one always could land." And the boy nodded silently and rowed away into the moonlit night with his whip; the man wandered back to the foot of the dike and climbed on to it again at the place where they had stood before. Soon he saw how the boat was moored at a steep, dark place, where a broad creek flowed out, and how a stocky figure leaped ashore. Didn't it seem as if the boy were snapping his whip? But then, too, it might be the sound of the rising flood. Several hundred feet to the north he saw what they had taken for a white horse; and now--yes, the figure of the boy came marching straight up to it. Now it raised its head as if it were startled; and the boy--now one could hear it plainly--snapped his whip. But--what was he doing? He was turning round, he was going back the same way he had come. The creature over there seemed to graze on unceasingly; no sound of neighing could be heard; sometimes it seemed as if strips of water were drawn across the apparition. The man gazed as if spellbound.

Then he heard the arrival of the boat at the shore he was on, and soon in the dusk he saw the boy climb toward him up the dike. "Well, Carsten," he asked, "what was it?"

The boy shook his head. "It was nothing!" he said. "From the boat I saw it a short way off; but then, when I was on the island--the devil knows where that animal has hid himself! The moonlight was bright enough; but when I came to that place there was nothing there but the pale bones of a half dozen sheep, and a little farther away lay the horse skeleton, too, with its white, long skull and let the moon shine into its empty sockets."

"Hm!" replied the man; "are you sure you saw right?"

"Yes, Iven, I stood in the place; a forlorn bird that had cowered behind the skeleton for the night flew up screaming so that I was startled and snapped my whip after it a few times."

"And that was all?"

"Yes, Iven; I don't know any more."

"It is enough, too," said the man, then he pulled the boy toward him by the arm and pointed over to the island. "Do you see something over there, Carsten?"

"It's true, there it goes again."

"Again?" said the man; "I've been looking over there all the time, and it hasn't been away at all; you went right up to the monster."

The boy stared at him; all at once horror was in his usually so pert face, and this did not escape the man. "Come," said the latter, "let's go home: from here it looks alive and over there is nothing but bones--that's more than you and I can grasp. But keep quiet about it, one mustn't talk of these things."

They turned round and the boy trotted beside him; they did not speak, and by their side the marshes lay in perfect silence.

But when the moon had vanished and the nights were black, something else happened.

At the time when the horse market was going on Hauke Haien had ridden into the city, although he had had nothing to do with the market. Nevertheless, when he came home toward evening, he brought home a second horse. It had rough hair, however, and was lean, so that one could count every rib and its eyes looked tired and sunken deep into the sockets. Elke had stepped out in front of the house door to meet her husband: "Heaven help us!" she cried, "what shall we do with that old white horse?" For when Hauke had ridden up to the house with it and stopped under the ash tree, she had seen that the poor creature was lame, too.

The young dikemaster, however, jumped laughing down from his brown horse: "Never mind, Elke; it didn't cost much, anyway."

The clever woman replied: "You know, the greatest bargain turns out to be the most expensive."

"But not always, Elke; this animal is at most four years old; look at it more carefully. It is starved and has been abused; our oats shall do it good. I'll take care of it myself, so that they won't overfeed it."

Meanwhile the animal stood with bowed head; its long mane hung down its neck. Elke, while her husband was calling the hired men, walked round it with curious eyes; but she shook her head: "A horse like this has never yet been in our stable."

When the servant boy came round the corner, he suddenly stood still with frightened eyes. "Well, Carsten," called the dikemaster, "what has struck you? Don't you like my white horse?"

"Yes--oh, yes, master, why not?"

"Then take the animal into the stable; don't feed it. I'll come myself right off."

The boy took hold of the halter of the white horse carefully and then hastily, as if for protection, seized the bridle of the brown horse also put into his trust. Hauke then went into the room with his wife. She had warm beer ready for him, and bread and butter were there, too.

He had soon finished; then he got up and walked up and down the room with his wife. "Let me tell you, Elke," he said, while the evening glow played on the tiles of the wall, "how I came to get the animal. I spent about an hour at the dikemaster general's; he has good news for me--there will be some departures, here and there, from my drawings; but the main thing, my outline, has been accepted, and the next days may bring the command to begin the new dike."

Elke sighed involuntarily. "After all?" she said, anxiously.

"Yes, wife," returned Hauke; "it will be hard work; but for that, I think, the Lord has brought us together! Our farm is in such good order now, you can take a good part of it on your own shoulders. Think ahead ten years--then we'll own quite a different property."

During his first words she had pressed her husband's hand into hers as a sign of assurance; but his last words could give her no pleasure. "For whom all the property?" she said. "You would have to take another wife then; I shall bring you no children."

Tears shot into her eyes; but he drew her close into his arms. "We'll leave that to the Lord," he said; "but now and at that time too, we are young enough to have joy for ourselves in the fruits of our labors."

She looked at him a long time with her dark eyes while he held her. "Forgive me, Hauke," she said; "sometimes I am a woman in despair."

He bent down to her face and kissed her: "You are my wife and I am your husband, Elke. And nothing can alter that."

Then she clasped her arms tightly round his neck: "You are right, Hauke, and what comes, will come for us both." Then she freed him, blushing. "You wanted to tell me about the white horse," she said in a low voice.

"So I did, Elke. I told you, my head and heart were full of joy over the good news that the dikemaster general had given me. So I was riding back again out of the city, when on the dam, behind the harbor, I met a shabby fellow--I couldn't tell if he was a vagabond, a tinker, or what. This fellow was pulling the white horse after him by the halter; but the animal raised his head and looked at me with dull eyes. It seemed to me as if he wanted to beg me for something--and, indeed, at that moment I was rich enough. 'Hallo, good sir,' I hailed him, 'where do you want to go with your jade?'

"The fellow stopped, and the white horse, too. 'Sell him,' he said, and nodded to me slyly.

"'But spare me!' I called cheerfully.

"'I think I shall!' he said; 'it's a good horse and worth no less than a hundred dollars.'

"I laughed into his face.

"'Well,' he said, 'don't laugh so hard; you don't need to pay it. But I have no use for it, it'll perish with me; with you it would soon look different.'

"Then I jumped down from my brown horse and looked into the white horse's mouth and saw that it was still a young animal. 'How much do you want for it?' I cried, for again the horse seemed to look at me beseechingly.

"'Sir, take it for thirty dollars,' said the fellow, 'and I'll give you the halter to the bargain.'

"And then, wife, I took the fellow's stretched-out brown hand, which looked almost like a claw. And so we have the white horse, and I think a good enough bargain. The only strange thing was that, when I rode away with the horses, I soon heard laughter behind me, and when I turned round my head, saw the Slovak standing with his legs apart, his arms on his back, and laughing after me like a devil.

"Oh, horror," cried Elke; "I hope that white horse will bring you nothing from his old master. May he thrive for your good, Hauke!"

"Thrive he shall, at least as far as I can make him!" And the dikemaster went into the stable, as he had told the boy a while ago.

But not only on the first night did he feed the white horse--from that time on he always did it himself and did not leave the animal out of sight. He wanted to show that he had made a first-rate bargain; anyway, he did not want to allow any mistake. And already after a few weeks the animal's condition improved: gradually the rough hair vanished; a smooth, blue-spotted skin appeared, and one day when he led it round on the place, it walked nimbly on its steady legs. Hauke thought of the adventurous seller. "That fellow was a fool, or a knave who had stolen it," he murmured to himself. Then soon, when the horse merely heard his footsteps, it threw back its head and neighed to greet him; and now he saw too that it had, what the Arabs demand of a good horse, a spare face, out of which two fiery brown eyes were gleaming. He would lead it into its stable and put a light saddle on it; and scarcely did he sit on the saddle, when the animal uttered a neigh like a shout of delight. It sped away with him, down the hill to the road and then to the dike; but the rider sat securely, and when they had reached the top, it went more quietly, easily, as if dancing, and thrust its head to the side of the sea. He patted and stroked its smooth neck, but it no longer needed these endearments, the horse seemed altogether to be one with the rider, and after he had ridden a distance northwards out on the dike, he turned it easily and reached the farm again.

The men stood at the foot of the hill and waited for the return of their master. "Now, John," he cried, as he leaped down from his horse, "you ride it to the fens where the others are; it'll carry you like a cradle."

The white horse shook its head and neighed aloud over the sunny marshes, while the hired man was taking off the saddle and the boy ran with it to the harness-room; then it laid its head on its master's shoulder and suffered him to caress it. But when the hired man wanted to swing himself on its back, it leaped to the side with a sudden bound and then stood motionless, turning its beautiful eyes on its master. "Hallo, Iven," cried Hauke, "has he hurt you?" and he tried to help his man up from the ground.

The latter was busily rubbing his hip: "No, sir, I can manage still; but let the devil ride that white horse!"

"And me!" Hauke added, laughing. "Then bring him to the fens by the bridle."

And when the man obeyed, somewhat humiliated, the white horse meekly let itself be led.

A few evenings later the man and the boy stood together in front of the stable door. The sunset gleam had vanished behind the dike, the land it enclosed was already wrapped in twilight; only at rare intervals from far off one could hear the lowing of a startled bull or the scream of a lark whose life was ending through the assault of a weasel or a water rat. The man was leaning against the doorpost and smoking his short pipe, from which he could no longer see the smoke; he and the boy had not yet talked together. Something weighed on the boy's soul, however, but he did not know how to begin with the silent man. "Iven," he said finally, "you know that horse skeleton on Jeverssand."

"What about it?" asked the man.

"Yes, Iven, what about it? It isn't there any more? neither by day nor by moonlight; I've run up to the dike about twenty times."

"The old bones have tumbled to pieces, I suppose," said Iven and calmly smoked on.

"But I was out there by moonlight, too; nothing is moving over there on Jeverssand, either!"

"Why, yes!" said the man, "if the bones have fallen apart, it won't be able to get up any more."

"Don't joke, Iven! I know now; I can tell you where it is."

The man turned to him suddenly: "Well, where is it, then?"

"Where?" repeated the boy emphatically. "It is standing in our stable; there it has been standing, ever since it was no more on the island. It isn't for nothing that our master always feeds it himself; I know about it, Iven."

For a while the man puffed away violently into the night. "You're not right in your mind, Carsten," he said then; "our white horse? If ever a horse was alive, that one is. How can a wide-awake youngster like you get mixed up with such an old wives' belief!"

But the boy could not be converted: if the devil was inside the white horse, why shouldn't it be alive? On the contrary, it was all the worse. He started, frightened, every time that he stepped into the stable toward night, where the creature was sometimes kept in summer and it turned its fiery head toward him so violently. "The devil take you!" he would mutter; "we won't stay together much longer!"

So he secretly looked round for a new place, gave notice and, about All Saints' Day, went to Ole Peters as hired man. Here he found attentive listeners for his story of the dikemaster's devil's horse. Fat Mrs. Vollina and her dull-witted father, the former dike overseer, Jess Harders, listened in smug horror and afterwards told it to all who had a grudge against the dikemaster in their hearts or who took pleasure in that kind of thing.

In the mean time already at the end of March the order to begin on the new dike had arrived from the dikemaster general. Hauke first called the dike overseers together, and in the inn up by the church they had all appeared one day and listened while he read to them the main points from the documents that had been drawn up so far: points from his petition from the report of the dikemaster general, and lastly the final order in which, above all, the outline which he had proposed was accepted, so that the new dike should not be steep like the old ones, but slant gradually toward the sea. But they did not listen with cheerful or even satisfied faces.

"Well, yes," said an old dike overseer, "here we have the whole business now, and protests won't do any good, because the dikemaster general patronises our dikemaster."

"You're right, Detlev Wiens," added a second; "our spring work is waiting, and now a dike miles long is to be made? then everything will have to be left undone."

"You can finish all that this year," said Hauke; "things don't move as fast as that."

Few wanted to admit that. "But your profile," said a third, bringing up something new; "the dike will be as broad on the outside toward the water as other things are long. Where shall we get the material? When shall the work be done?"

"If not this year, then next year; that will depend chiefly on ourselves," said Hauke.

Angry laughter passed along the whole company. "But what is all that useless labor for? The dike isn't supposed to be any bigger than the old one;" cried a new voice; "and I'm sure that's stood for over thirty years."

"You are right," said Hauke, "thirty years ago the old dike broke; then backwards thirty-five years ago, and again forty-five years ago; but since then, although it is still standing steep and senseless, the highest floods have spared us. But the new dike is to stand in spite of such floods for hundreds of years; for it will not be broken through; because the gentle slope toward the sea gives the waves no point of attack, and so you will gain safe land for yourselves and your children, and that is why the government and the dikemaster general support me--and, besides, that is what you ought to be aware of for your own profit."

When the assembled were not ready on the spot to answer these words, an old white-haired man rose with difficulty from his chair. It was Elke's godfather, Jewe Manners, who, in response to Hauke's beseeching, had kept his office as dike overseer.

"Dikemaster Hauke Haien," he said, "you give us much commotion and expense, and I wish you had waited with all this until the Lord had called me to rest; but--you are right, and only unreason can deny that. We ought to thank God every day that He has kept us our precious piece of foreland against storms and the force of the tide, in spite of our idleness; now, I believe, is the eleventh hour, in which we must lend a hand and try to save it for ourselves to the best of our knowledge and powers, and not defy God's patience any longer. I, my friends, am an old man; I have seen dikes built and broken; but the dike that Hauke Haien has proposed according to his God-given insight and has carried through with the government--that dike none of you living men will see broken. And if you don't want to thank him yourselves, your grandchildren some day will not deny him his laurel wreath."

Jewe Manners sat down again; he took his blue handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a few drops from his forehead. The old man was still known as a man of efficiency and irreproachable integrity, and as the assembly was not inclined to agree with him, it remained silent. But Hauke Haien took the floor, though all saw that he had grown pale.

"I thank you, Jewe Manners," he said, "for staying here and for what you have said. You other gentlemen, have the goodness at least to consider the building of the new dike, which indeed will be my burden, as something that cannot be helped any more, and let us decide accordingly what needs to be done."

"Speak!" said one of the overseers. And Hauke spread the map of the new dike out on the table.

"A while ago someone has asked," he began, "from where we shall get the soil? You see, as far as the foreland stretches out into the flooded district, a strip of land is left free outside of the dike line; from this we can take our soil and from the foreland which runs north and south along the dike from the new enclosed land. If we have a good layer of clay at the water side, at the inside and the middle we can take sand. Now first we have to get a surveyor to mark off the line of the new dike on the foreland. The one who helped me work out my plan will be best suited for the work. Furthermore we have to order some one-horse tipcarts at a cartwright's for the purpose of getting our clay and other material. For damming the channel and also for the inside, where we may have to use sand, we shall need--I cannot tell now how many cartloads of straw for the dike, perhaps more than can be spared in the marshes. Let us discuss then now how all this is to be acquired and arranged. The new lock here, too, on the west side toward the water will have to be given over to an efficient carpenter later for repairs."

The assembly gathered round the table, looked at the map with half attention and gradually began to talk; but it seemed as if they did it merely so that there might be some talking. When it came to the choice of a surveyor, one of the younger ones remarked: "You have thought it out, dikemaster; you must know best yourself who is fit for it."

But Hauke replied: "As you are sworn men, you have to speak your own opinion, Jacob Meyen; and if you think of something better, I'll let my proposal fall."

"Oh, I guess it'll be all right," said Jacob Meyen.

But one of the older ones did not think that it would be so perfectly all right. He had a nephew, a surveyor, the like of whom had never been in the marshes, who was said to surpass the dikemaster's father, the late Tede Haien.

So there was a discussion about the two surveyors and it was finally decided to let both do the work together. There was similar disputing over the carts, the furnishing of the straw and everything else, and Hauke came home late and almost exhausted on his brown horse which he was still riding at that time. But when he sat in the old armchair, handed down from his self-important but more easy-going predecessor, his wife was quickly at his side: "You look tired, Hauke, she said, and with her slender hand pushed his hair out of his forehead.

"A little, I suppose," he replied.

"And is it getting on?"

"It'll get on;" he said with a bitter smile; "but I myself have to push the wheels and have to be glad if they aren't kept back."

"But not by all?"

"No, Elke; your godfather, Jewe Manners, is a good man; I wish he were thirty years younger."

When after a few weeks the dike line had been marked off and most of the carts had been furnished, the dikemaster had gathered together in the inn by the church all the shareholders of the land to be diked in and also the owners of the land behind the old dike. He wanted to present to them a plan for the distribution of the work and the cost and to hear their possible objections; for the owners of the old land had to bear their part of the labor and the cost because the new dike and the new sluices would lessen the running expenses of the older ones. This plan had been a hard piece of work for Hauke and if he had not been given a dike messenger and a dike clerk through the mediation of the dikemaster general, he could not have accomplished it so soon, although again he was working well into the night. When he went to bed, tired to death, his wife no longer waited for him with feigned sleep; she, too, had such a full share of daily work that she lay, as if at the bottom of a deep well, in a sleep that could not be disturbed.

Now Hauke read his plan and again spread his papers out on the table--papers which, to be sure, had already lain for three days in the inn for inspection. Some serious men were present, who regarded this conscientious diligence with awe, and who, after quiet consideration, submitted to the low charge of the dikemaster. But others, whose shares in the new land had been sold either by themselves or their fathers or someone else who had bought them, complained because they had to pay part of the expenses of the new diked-in land which no longer concerned them, not thinking that through the new work the old lands would be less costly to keep up. Again there were others who were blessed with shares for the new land who clamoured that one should buy these of them for very little, because they wanted to be rid of shares that burdened them with such unreasonable labor. Ole Peters who was leaning against the doorpost with a grim face, shouted into the midst: "Think first and then trust in our dikemaster! He knows how to calculate; he already had most of the shares, then he was clever enough to get mine at a bargain, and when he had them, he decided to dike in the new land."

After these words for a moment a deadly silence fell upon the assembly. The dikemaster stood by the table where he had spread out his papers before; he raised his head and looked over to Ole Peters: "You know very well, Ole Peters," he said, "that you are libeling me; you are doing it just the same, because you know that, nevertheless, a good part of the dirt you are throwing at me will cling to me. The truth is that you wanted to be rid of your shares, and that at that time I needed them for my sheep raising. And if you want to know more I will tell you that the dirty words which escaped your lips here at the inn, namely that I was made dikemaster only on account of my wife--that they have stirred me up and I wanted to show you all that I could be dikemaster on my own account. And so, Ole Peters, I have done what the dikemaster before me ought to have done. If you are angry, though, because at that time your shares were made mine--you hear now, there are enough who want to sell theirs cheaply, because the work connected with them is too much."

There was applause from a small part of the assembled men, and old Jewe Manners, who stood among them, cried aloud: "Bravo, Hauke Haien! The Lord will let your work succeed!"

But they did not finish after all, although Ole Peters was silent, and the people did not disperse till supper time. Not until they had a second meeting was everything settled, and then only after Hauke had agreed to furnish four teams in the next month instead of the three that were his share.

At last, when the Whitsuntide bells were ringing through the land, the work had begun: unceasingly the dumpcarts were driven from the foreland to the dike line, there to dump the clay, and in the same way an equal number was driven back to get new clay from the foreland. At the line of the dike itself men stood with shovels and spades in order to put the dumped clay into its right place and to smooth it. Huge loads of straw were driven up and taken down. This straw was not only used to cover the lighter material, like sand and loose earth, which was used for the inside; gradually single pieces of the dike were finished, and the sod with which they were covered was in places securely overlaid with straw as a protection against the gnawing waves. Inspectors engaged for the purpose walked back and forth, and when it was stormy, they stood with wide open mouths and shouted their orders through wind and storm. In and out among them rode the dikemaster on his white horse, which he now used exclusively, and the animal flew back and forth with its rider, while he gave his orders quickly and drily, praised the workmen, or, as it happened sometimes, dismissed a lazy or clumsy man without mercy. "That can't be helped!" he would cry; "we can't have the dike spoiled on account of your laziness!" From far, when he came up from the enclosed land below, they heard the snorting of his horse, and all hands went to work more briskly. "Come on, get to work! There's the rider on the white horse!"

During breakfast time, when the workmen sat together in masses on the ground, with their morning bread, Hauke rode along the deserted works, and his eyes were sharp to spy where slovenly hands had used the spade. Then when he rode up to the men and explained to them how the work ought to be done, they would look up at him and keep on chewing their bread patiently; but he never heard a word of assent or even any remark. Once at this time of day, though rather late, when he had found the work on a part of the dike particularly well done, he rode to the nearest assembly of breakfasting men, jumped down from his white horse and asked cheerfully who had done such a neat day's work. But they only looked at him shyly and sombrely and only slowly, as if against their will, a few names were given. The man to whom he had given his horse, which stood as meekly as a lamb, held it with both hands and looked as if he were frightened at the animal's beautiful eyes fixed, as usual, upon its master.

"Well, Marten," Hauke called to him; "why do you stand there as if you had been thunderstruck?"

"Sir, your horse is so calm, as if it were planning something bad!"

Hauke laughed and took the horse by the reins himself, when immediately it rubbed its head caressingly against his shoulder. Some of the workmen looked shyly at horse and rider, others ate their morning meal silently, as if all this were no concern of theirs, and now and then threw a crumb to the gulls who had remembered this feeding place and with their slender wings almost descended on the heads of the men. For a while the dikemaster gazed absently at the begging birds as they chased with their bills the bits thrown at them; then he leaped to his saddle and rode away, without turning round to look at the men. Some of the words that now were being spoken among them sounded to him like derision. "What can that mean?" he spoke to himself. "Was Elke right when she said that all were against me? These laborers and poorer people, too, many of whom will be well off through my new dike?"

He spurred on his horse, which flew down into the enclosed land as if it were mad. To be sure, he himself knew nothing of the uncanny glamour with which the rider of the white horse had been clothed by his former servant boy; but now the people should have seen him, with his eyes staring out of his haggard face, his coat fluttering on his fiery white horse.

Thus summer and autumn had passed and until toward the end of November the work had been continued; then frost and snow had put a stop to the labors and it was decided to leave the land that was to be diked in, open. Eight feet the dike rose above the level of the land. Only where the lock was to be made on the west side toward the water, a gap had been left; the channel up in front of the old dike had not yet been touched. So the flood could make its way into the enclosed land without doing it or the new dike either any great damage. And this work of human hands was entrusted to the great God and put under His protection until the spring sun should make possible its completion.

In the mean time a happy event had been expected in the house of the dikemaster: in the ninth year of his marriage a child had been born. It was red and shrivelled and weighed seven pounds, as new-born children should when they belong, as this one did, to the female sex; only its crying was strangely muffled and did not please the wise woman. The worst of all was that on the third day Elke was seized with high childbed fever, was delirious and recognised neither her husband nor her old helper. The unbounded joy that had come over Hauke at the sight of his child had turned to sorrow. The doctor from the city was called, he sat at her bedside and felt her pulse and looked about helplessly. Hauke shook his head: "He won't help; only God can help!" He had thought out a Christianity of his own, but there was something that kept back his prayer. When the old doctor had driven away, Hauke stood by the window, staring out into the wintry day, and while the patient was screaming in her delirium, he folded his hands--he did not know whether he did so in devotion or so as not to lose himself in his terrible fear.

"The sea! The sea!" wailed the patient. "Hold me!" she screamed; "hold me, Hauke!" Then her voice sank; it sounded, as if she were crying: "Out on the sea, on the wide sea. Oh, God, I'll never see him again!"

Then he turned round and pushed the nurse from the bed; he fell on his knees, clasped his wife and drew her to his heart: "Elke, Elke, don't you know me? I am with you!"

But she only opened wide her eyes glowing with fever and looked about, as if hopelessly lost.

He laid her back on her pillows; then he pressed his hands together convulsively: "Lord, my God," he cried; "don't take her from me! Thou knowest, I cannot live without her!" Then it seemed as if a thought came to him, and he added in a lower voice: "I know well Thou canst not always do as Thou wouldst--not even Thou; Thou art all-wise; Thou must act according: to Thy wisdom. Oh Lord, speak to me through a breath!"

It seemed as if there were a sudden calm. He only heard low breathing; when he turned to the bed, he saw his wife lying in a quiet sleep and the nurse looking at him with horrified eyes. He heard the door move.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"Sir, the maid Ann Grethe went out; she had brought in the warming-pan."

"Why do you look at me so in such confusion, Madame Levke?"

"I? I was frightened by your prayer; with that you can't pray death away from anybody!"

Hauke looked at her with his penetrating eyes: "Do you, too, like our Ann Grethe, go to the conventicle at the Dutch tailor Jantje's?"

"Yes, sir; we both have the living faith!"

Hauke made no reply. The practise of holding seceding conventicles, which at that time was in full swing, had also blossomed out among the Frisians. "Down-and-out" artisans and schoolmasters dismissed as drunkards played the leading parts, and girls, young and old women, lazy and lonely people went eagerly to the secret meetings at which anybody could play the priest. Of the dikemaster's household Ann Grethe and the servant boy in love with her spent their free evenings there. To be sure, Elke had not concealed her doubtful opinion of this from Hauke, but he had said that in matters of faith one ought not to interfere with anyone: this could not hurt anybody, and it was better to have them go there than to the inn for whiskey.

So he had let it be, and so he had kept silent even now. But, to be sure, people were not silent about him; the words of his prayer were spread from house to house. He had denied the omnipotence of God; what was a God without omnipotence? He was a denier of God; that affair with the devil's horse may have something in it after all!

Hauke heard nothing of all this; his ears and eyes were open only for his wife in these days, even his child did not exist for him any more.

The old doctor came again, came every day, sometimes twice, then stayed a whole night, again wrote a prescription and Iven Johns swiftly rode with it to the apothecary. But finally the doctor's face grew more cheerful, and he nodded confidentially to the dikemaster: "She'll pull through. She'll pull through, with God's help!" And one day--whether it was because his skill had conquered her illness or because in answer to Hauke's prayer God had been able after all to find a way out of his trouble--when the doctor was alone with the patient, he spoke to her, while his old eyes smiled: "Lady, now I can safely say to you: to-day the doctor has his gala-day; things looked very darkly for you, but now you belong to us again, to the living!"

Then a flood of light streamed out of her dark eyes; "Hauke, Hauke, where are you?" she cried, and when, in response to her loud cry, he rushed into the room and to her bed, she flung her arms round his neck: "Hauke, my husband--saved! I can stay with you!" Then the old doctor pulled his silk handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his forehead and cheeks with it and nodding left the room.

On the third evening after this day a pious speaker--it was a slippermaker who had once been dismissed by the dikemaster--spoke at the conventicle held at the Dutch tailor's, where he explained to his audience the attributes of God: "But he who denies the omnipotence of God, who says: 'I know Thou canst not as Thou wouldst'--we all know the unhappy man; he weighs like a stone on the community--he has fallen off from God and seeks the enemy of God, the friend of sin, as his comforter; for the hand of man has to lean upon some staff. But you--beware of him who prays thus; his prayer is a curse!"

This too was spread from house to house. What is not spread in a small community? And it reached Hauke's ears. He said no word about it, not even to his wife; but sometimes he would embrace her violently and draw her to himself: "Stay faithful, Elke! Stay faithful to me!" Then her eyes would look up at him full of wonder. "Faithful to you? To whom else should I be faithful?" After a short while, however, she had understood his words. "Yes, Hauke, we are faithful to each other; not only because we need each other." Then each went his and her way to work.

So far all would have been well. But in spite of all the lively work, a loneliness had spread round him, and in his heart nestled a stubbornness and a reserved manner toward other people. Only toward his wife he was always the same, and every evening and every morning he knelt at the cradle of his child as if there he could find the place of his eternal salvation. Toward servants and workmen, however, he grew more severe; the clumsy and careless ones whom he used to instruct with quiet reproaches were now startled by his harsh address, and sometimes Elke had to make things right quietly where he had offended.

When spring came, work on the dike began again. The gap in the western dike line was closed by a temporary dike half-moon shaped on the inside and the same toward the outside, for the protection of the new lock about to be made. And as the lock grew, so the chief dike gradually acquired its height, which could be more and more quickly attained. The work of directing was not any easier for the dikemaster, as in place of Jewe Manners, Ole Peters had stepped in as dike overseer. Hauke had not cared to attempt preventing this, but now in place of the encouraging word and the corresponding friendly slap on the shoulder that he had earned from his wife's old godfather, he had to cope with the successor's secret hostility and unnecessary objections which had to be thwarted with equally unnecessary reasons. For Ole belonged to the important people, to be sure, but not to the clever ones in dike matters; besides, the "scribbling hired man" of former days was still in his way.

The brightest sky again spread over sea and marshes, and the enclosed land was once more gay with strong cattle, the bellowing of which from time to time interrupted the widespread calm. Larks sang continually high in the air, but one was not aware of it until for the time of a heartbeat the singing had ceased. No bad weather disturbed the work, and the lock was ready with its unpainted structure of beams before it needed the protection of the temporary dike for even one night; the Lord seemed to favor the new work. Then Elke's eyes would laugh to greet her husband when he came home from the dike on his white horse. "You did turn into a good animal!" he said, and then patted the horse's smooth neck. But when he saw the child clinging round her neck, Hauke leaped down and let the tiny thing dance in his arms. Then, when the white horse would fix its brown eyes on the child, he would say: "Come here, you shall have the honor." And he would place little Wienke--for that was her Christian name--on the saddle and lead the white horse round in a circle on the hill. The old ash tree, too, sometimes had the honor; he would set the child on a swinging bough and let it rock. The mother stood in the house door with laughing eyes. But the child did not laugh; her eyes, between which there was a delicate little nose, looked a little dully into the void, and her little hands did not try to seize the small stick that her father was holding for her to take. Hauke did not pay attention to this, especially as he knew nothing about such little children. Only Elke, when she saw the bright-eyed girl on the arm of her charwoman, who had been confined at the same time with her, sometimes said with regret: "Mine isn't as far on as yours yet, Trina." And the woman, as she shook the chubby boy she held by the hand with brusque love, would cry: "Yes, madam, children are different; this one here, he stole apples out of my room before he was more than two years old." And Elke pushed the chubby boy's curls from his eyes, and then secretly pressed her quiet child to her heart.

At the beginning of October, the new lock stood solidly at the west side in the main dike, now closed on both sides. Except for the gaps by the channel, the new dike now sloped all the way round with a gentle profile toward the water and rose above the ordinary high tide by fifteen feet. From the northwestern corner one, could look unhindered past Jevers Island out over the sea. But, to be sure, the winds blew more sharply here; one's hair fluttered, and he who wanted a view from this point had to have his cap securely on his head.

Toward the end of November, when storm and rain had set in, there remained only one gap to close, the one hard by the old dike, at the bottom of which the sea water shot through the channel into the new enclosure. At both sides stood the walls of the dike; now the cleft between them had to vanish. Dry summer weather would have made the work easier; but it had to be done anyway, for a rising storm might endanger the whole work. And Hauke staked everything on accomplishing the end. Rain poured down, the wind whistled; but his lean figure on the fiery white horse rose now here, now there out of the black masses of people who were busy by the gap, above and below, on the north side of the dike. Now he was seen below beside the dump-carts that already had to go far on the foreland to get the clay; a crowded lot of these had just reached the channel in order to cast off their loads. Through the splashing of the rain and the roaring of the wind, from time to time sounded the sharp orders of the dikemaster, who wanted to rule here alone to-day. He called the carts according to their numbers and ordered back those that were crowding up. When his "Stop" sounded, then all work ceased. "Straw!" Send down a load of straw! he called to those above, and the straw from one of their loads came tumbling down on to the wet clay. Below men jumped about in it and tore it apart and called up to the others that they did not want to be buried. Again new carts came, and Hauke was up on top once more, and looked down from his white horse into the cleft below and watched them shovel and dump their loads. Then he glanced out over the sea. The wind was sharp and he saw how the edge of the water was climbing higher up the dike and that the waves rose still higher. He saw, too, that the men were drenched and could scarcely breathe during their hard work because of the wind which cut off the air right before their mouths and because of the cold rain that was pouring down on them. "Hold out, men! Hold out!" he shouted down to them. "Only one foot higher; then it'll be enough for this flood." And through all the raging of the storm one could hear the noise of the workmen; the splashing of the masses of clay tumbling down, the rattling of the carts and the rustling of the straw let down from above went on unceasingly. In the midst of these noises, now and then, the wailing of a little yellow dog could be heard, which, shivering and forlorn, was knocked about among all the men and teams. Suddenly a scream of anguish from the little animal rose out of the cleft. Hauke looked down: he had seen the dog hurled down from above. His face suddenly flushed with rage. "Stop! Stop!" he shouted down to the carts; for the wet clay was being heaped up unceasingly.

"Why?" a rough voice bawled up from below, "not on account of the wretched brat of a dog?"

"Stop, I say!" Hauke shouted again; "bring me the dog! I don't want any crime done with our work."

But not a hand stirred; only a few spades full of tough clay were still thrown beside the howling animal. Then he spurred his white horse so that it uttered a cry and stormed down the dike, and all gave way before him. "The dog!" he shouted, "I want the dog!"

A hand slapped his shoulder gently, as if it were the hand of old Jewe Manners, but when Hauke looked round, he saw that it was only a friend of the old man's. "Take care, dikemaster!" he whispered to him. "You have no friends among these people; let this dog business be!"

The wind whistled, the rain splashed, the men had stuck their spades into the ground, some had thrown them away. Hauke bent down to the old man. "Do you want to hold my horse, Harke Jens?" he asked; and the latter scarcely had the reins in his hand when Hauke had leaped into the cleft and held the little wailing animal in his arms. Almost in the same moment he sat high in his saddle again and galloped back to the dike. He glanced swiftly over the men who stood by the teams. "Who was it?" he called. "Who threw down this creature?"

For a moment all was silent, for rage was flashing from the face of the dikemaster, and they had a superstitious fear of him. Then a muscular fellow stepped down from a team and stood before him. "I didn't do it, dikemaster," he said, bit off a piece from his roll of tobacco, and calmly pushed it into his mouth before he went on, "but he who did it, did right; if your dike is to hold, something alive has to be put into it!"

"Something alive? From what catechism have you learned that?"

"From none, sir!" replied the fellow with a pert laugh: "our grandfathers knew that, who, I am sure, were as good Christians as you! A child is still better; if you can't get that, a dog will do!"

"You keep still with your heathen doctrines," Hauke shouted at him, "the hole would be stopped up better if you had been thrown into it!"

"Oho!" sounded from a dozen throats, and the dikemaster saw grim faces and clenched fists round him; he saw that these were no friends. The thought of his dike came over him like a sudden fear. What would happen if now all should throw down their spades? As he glanced down he again saw the friend of old Jewe Manners, who walked in and out among the workmen, talked to this one and that one, smiled at one, slapped another on the shoulder with a pleasant air--and one after another took up his spade again. After a few minutes the work was in full swing--What was it that he still wanted? The channel had to be closed and he hid the dog safely in the folds of his cloak. With a sudden decision, he turned his white horse to the next team: "Let down the straw!" he called despotically, and the teamster obeyed mechanically. Soon it rustled down into the depth, and on all sides all arms were stirring again.

This work lasted an hour longer. It was six o'clock, and deep twilight was descending; the rain had stopped. Then Hauke called the superintendents together beside his horse: "To-morrow morning at four o'clock," he said, "everybody is to be in his place; the moon will still be shining, then we'll finish with God's blessing. And one thing more," he cried, when they were about to go: "do you know this dog?" And he took the trembling creature out of his cloak.

They did not know it. Only one man said: "He has been begging round the village for days; he belongs to nobody."

"Then he is mine!" said the dikemaster. "Don't forget: to-morrow morning at four o'clock!" And he rode away.

When he came home, Ann Grethe stepped out of the door. She had on neat clothing, and the thought shot through his head that she was going to the conventicle tailor's.

"Hold out your apron!" he called to her, and as she did so automatically, he threw the little dog, all covered with clay, into the apron.

"Carry him in to little Wienke; he is to be her companion! But wash and warm him first; then you'll do a good deed, too, that will please God, for the creature is almost frozen!"

And Ann Grethe could not help obeying her master, and therefore did not get to the conventicle that day.

The next day the last cut with the spade was made on the new dike. The wind had gone down; gulls and other sea birds were flying back and forth over land and water in graceful flight. From Jevers Island one could hear like a chorus of a thousand voices the cries of the wild geese that still were making themselves at home on the coast of the North Sea, and out of the white morning mists that spread over the wide marshes, gradually rose a golden autumn day and shed its light on the new work of human hands.

After a few weeks the commissioners of the ruler came with the dikemaster general for inspection. A great banquet, the first since the funeral banquet of old Tede Volkerts, was given in the house of the dikemaster, to which all the dike overseers and the greater landowners were invited. After dinner all the carriages of the guests and of the dikemaster were made ready. The dikemaster general helped Elke into the carriage in front of which the brown horse was stamping his hoofs; then he leaped in after her and took the reins himself, for he wanted to drive the clever wife of his dikemaster himself. Then they rode merrily from the hill down to the road, then up to the new dike, and upon it all round the new enclosed land. In the mean time a light northwest wind had risen and the tide was driven against the north and west sides of the new dike. But one could not help being aware of the fact that the gentle slope made the attack of the water gentler; and praise was poured on the new dikemaster from the lips of the ruler's commissioners, so that the objections which now and then were slowly brought out by the overseers, were soon stifled by it.

This, too, passed by. But the dikemaster received another satisfaction one day as he rode along on the new dike, in quiet, self-conscious meditation. The question naturally arose in his mind why the new enclosure, which would not have had its being without him, into which he had put the sweat of his brow and his night watches, now finally was named after one of the princesses "the new Caroline-land." But it was so: on all the documents concerned with it stood the name, on some even in red Gothic letters. Then, just as he was looking up, he saw two workmen coming toward him with their tools, the one about twenty paces behind the other. "Why don't you wait!" he heard the one behind calling. The other, who was just standing by a path which led down into the new land, called to him: "Another time, Jens. I'm late; I have to dig clay here."

"Where?"

"Down here, in the Hauke-Haien-land."

He called it aloud, as he trotted down the path, as if he wanted the whole marsh below to hear it. But Hauke felt as if he were hearing his fame proclaimed; he rose from his saddle, spurred on his horse and with steady eyes looked over the wide land that lay to his left. "Hauke-Haien-land! Hauke-Haien-land!" he repeated softly; that sounded as if in all time it could not have another name. Let them defy him as they would--they could not get round his name; the name of the princess--wouldn't that soon moulder in old documents?--His white horse galloped proudly and in his ears he heard a murmur: "Hauke-Haien-land! Hauke-Haien-land!" In his thoughts the new dike almost grew into the eighth wonder of the world; in all Frisia there was not the like of it. And he let the white horse dance, for he felt as if he were standing in the midst of all the Frisians, towering over them by the height of a head, and glancing down upon all keenly and full of pity.

Gradually three years had gone by since the building of the dike. The new structure had proved its worth, the cost of repairing had been small. And now almost everywhere in the enclosed land white clover was blooming, and as one walked over the sheltered pastures, the summer wind blew toward one a whole cloud of sweet fragrance. Thus the time had come to turn the shares, which hitherto had only been ideal, into real ones, and to allot to each shareholder the piece which he was to keep as his own. Hauke had not been slow to acquire some new shares before this; Ole Peters had kept back out of spite, and owned nothing in the new land. The distribution of the parts could not be accomplished without annoyance and quarreling; but it was done, nevertheless. This day, too, lay behind the dikemaster.

From now on he lived in a lonely way for his duties as farmer and as dikemaster and for those who were nearest to him. His old friends were no longer living, and he was not the man to make new ones. But under his roof was a peace which even the quiet child did not mar. She spoke little, the constant questioning that is so characteristic of bright children was rare with her and usually came in such a way that it was hard to answer; but her dear, simple little face almost always wore an expression of content. She had two play-fellows, and they were enough: when she wandered over the hill, the rescued little yellow dog always jumped round her, and when the dog appeared, little Wienke did not stay away long. The second companion was a pewit gull. As the dog's name was "Pearl" so the gull was called "Claus."

Claus had been installed on the farm by an aged woman. Eighty-year-old Trin Jans had not been able to keep herself any longer in her hut on the outer dike; and Elke had thought that the aged servant of her grandfather might find peaceful evening hours and a good room to die in at her home. So, half by force, she and Hauke had brought her to their farm and settled her in the little northwest room in the new barn that the dikemaster had had built beside the main house when he had enlarged his establishment. A few of the maids had been given rooms next to the old woman's and could help her at night. Along the walls she kept her old furnishings; a chest made of wood from sugar boxes, above it two coloured pictures of her lost son, then a spinning-wheel, now at rest, and a very neat canopied bed in front of which stood an unwieldy stool covered with the white fur of the defunct Angora cat. But something alive, too, she had had about her and brought with her: that was the gull Claus, which had been attached to her and fed by her for years. To be sure, when winter came, it flew with the other gulls to the south and did not come again until the wormwood was fragrant on the shore.