And when he had waked up and talked to me with effort for a quarter of an hour, and I wanted to go, then he held me back by the hand so full of fear, as if he were afraid it was for the last time; but—”

“But what, Elke?” asked Hauke, when she hesitated to go on.

A few tears ran down the girl’s cheeks. “I was only thinking of my father,” she said; “believe me, it will be hard for him to get on without you.” And then added, as if she had to summon her strength for these words: “It often seems to me as if he too were getting ready for death.”

Hauke said nothing; it seemed to him suddenly, as if the ring were stirring in his pocket. But even before he had suppressed his indignation over this involuntary impulse, Elke went on: “No, don’t be angry, Hauke; I trust you won’t leave us anyway.”

Then he eagerly took her hand, and she did not draw it away. For a while the young people stood together in the falling darkness, until their hands slipped apart and each went his way. A gust of wind started and rustled through the leaves of the ash tree and made the shutters rattle on the front of the house; but gradually the night sank down, and quiet lay over the gigantic plain.

Through Elke’s persuasion, the old dikemaster had relieved Hauke of his services, although he had not given notice at the right time, and two new hired men were in the house. A few months later Tede Haien died; but before he died, he called his son to his bedside: “Sit by me, my child;” said the old man with his faint voice, “close by me! You don’t need to be afraid; he who is near me now is only the dark angel of the Lord who comes to call me.”

And his son, deeply affected, sat down close by the dark bed fixed to the wall: “Tell me, father, what you still have to say.”

“Yes, my son, there is still something,” said the old man and stretched out his hands across the quilt. “When, as a half-grown boy, you went to serve the dikemaster, then you had the idea in your head that you wanted to be one yourself some day. That idea I caught from you, and gradually I came to think that you were the right man for it. But your inheritance was too small for such an office. I have lived frugally during your time of service—I planned to increase it,”

Passionately Hauke seized his father’s hands, and the old man tried to sit up, so that he could see him. “Yes, yes, my son,” he said; “there in the uppermost drawer of the chest is a document. You know old Antje Wohlers has a fen of five and a half acres; but she could not get on with the rent alone in her crippled old age; so I have always round Martinmas given the poor soul a certain sum, or more when I could; and for that she gave her fen over to me; it is all legally settled. Now she too is on her deathbed; the disease of our marshes, cancer, has seized her; you won’t have to pay her any more.”

For a while he closed his eyes; then he spoke once more: “It isn’t much; but you’ll have more then than you were accustomed to with me. May it serve you well in your life on earth!”

With his son’s words of thanks in his ears, the old man fell asleep. He had no more cares: and after a few days the dark angel of the Lord had closed his eyes forever, and Hauke received his inheritance.

The day after the funeral Elke came into his house. “Thanks for looking in, Elke,” Hauke greeted her.

But she replied: “I’m not looking in; I want to put things in order a little, so that you can live decently in your house. Your father with all his figures and drawings didn’t look round much, and the death too makes confusion. I want to make things a little livable for you.”

His grey eyes looked full of confidence upon her. “All right, put things in order!” he said; “I like it better that way too.”

And then she began to clear up: the drawing board, which was still lying there, was dusted and carried up to the attic, drawing pens and pencil and chalk were locked away carefully in a drawer of the chest; then the young servant girl was called in to help and the furniture was put into different and better positions in the room, so that it seemed as if it now had grown lighter and bigger. Smiling, Elke said: “Only we women can do that,” and Hauke in spite of his mourning for his father, had watched her with happy eyes, and, where there was need for it, had helped too.

And when toward dusk—it was in the beginning of September—everything was just as she wanted it for him, she took his hand and nodded to him with her dark eyes: “Now come and have supper with us; for I had to promise my father to bring you; then when you go home, you can enter your house in peace.”

Then when they came into the spacious living-room of the dikemaster, where the shutters were already closed and the two candles burning on the table, the latter wanted to rise from his armchair, but his heavy body sank back and he only called to his former man: “That’s right, that’s right, Hauke, that you’ve come to see your old friends. Come nearer, still nearer.” And when Hauke had stepped up to his chair, he took his hand into both of his own: “Now, now, my boy,” he said, “be calm now, for we all must die, and your father was none of the worst. But Elke, now see that the roast gets on to the table; we have to get strength. There’s a great deal of work for us, Hauke! The fall inspection is coming; there’s a pile of dike and sluice bills as high as the house; the damage to the dike of the western enclosure the other day—I don’t know where my head is, but yours, thank God, is a good bit younger; you’re a good boy, Hauke.”

And after this long speech, with which the old man had laid bare his whole heart, he let himself drop back into his chair and blinked longingly toward the door, through which Elke was just coming in with the roast on the platter. Hauke stood smiling beside him. “Now sit down,” said the dikemaster, “so that we won’t lose time for nothing; that doesn’t taste well cold.”

And Hauke sat down; it seemed to be taken for granted that he should help to do the work of Elke’s father. And when the fall inspection had come and a few more months of the year were gone, he had indeed done the greatest part of the work.

The story-teller stopped and looked round. The scream of a gull had knocked against the window, and out in the hall one could hear a stamping of feet, as if someone were taking the clay off his heavy boots.

The dikemaster and the overseers turned their heads toward the door of the room. “What is it?” called the first.

  A strong man with a southwester on his head had stepped in.

“Sir,” he said, “we both have seen it—Hans Nickels and I: the rider on the white horse has thrown himself into the breach.”

“Where did you see that?” asked the dikemaster.

“There is only the one break; in Jansen’s fen, where the Hauke-Haienland begins.”

“Did you see it only once?”

“Only once; it was only like a shadow, but that doesn’t mean that this was the first time it happened.”

The dikemaster had risen. “You must excuse me,” he said, turning to me, “we have to go out and see what this calamity is leading to.” Then he left the room with the messenger; the rest of the company too rose and followed him.

I stayed alone with the schoolmaster in the large deserted room; through the curtainless windows, which were now no longer covered by the backs of the guests sitting in front of them, one could have a free view and see how the wind was chasing the dark clouds across the sky.

The old man remained on his seat, with a superior, almost pitying smile on his lips. “It is too empty here now,” he said; “may I invite you to my room? I live in this house; and believe me, I know every kind of weather here by the dike—there is nothing for us to fear.”

This invitation I accepted with thanks, for I too began to feel chilly, and so we took a light and climbed up the stairs to a room under the gables; there the windows also looked toward the west, but they were covered by woollen rugs.