In a bookcase I saw a small library, beside it portraits of two old professors; before a table stood a great high armchair. “Make yourself comfortable,” said my pleasant host and threw some pieces of peat into the still faintly glowing stove, which was crowned by a tin kettle on top. “Only wait a little while! The fire will soon roar; then I’ll mix you a little glass of grog—that’ll keep you awake!”

“I don’t need that,” I said; “I won’t grow sleepy, when I accompany your Hauke upon his life-journey!”

“Do you think so?” and he nodded toward me with his keen eyes, after I had been comfortably settled in his armchair.

Well, where did we leave off? Yes, yes; I know. Well, Hauke had received his inheritance, and as old Antje Wohlers, too, had died of her ailment, his property was increased by her fen. But since the death, or rather, since the last words of his father, something had sprung up within him, the seed of which he had carried in his heart since his boy-hood; he repeated to himself more often than enough that he was the right man for the post if there had to be a new dikemaster. That was it; his father, who had to know, who was the cleverest man in the village, had added his word, like a last gift to his heritage. The fen of the Wohlers woman, for which he had to thank his father too, should be the first stepping-stone to this height. For, to be sure, even with this—a dikemaster had to be able to show more real estate! But his father had got on frugally through his lonely years; and with what he had saved he had made himself owner of new property. This Hauke could do too, and even more; for his father’s strength had already been spent, but he could do the hardest work for years. To be sure, even if he should succeed along this line—on account of the sharp methods he had brought into the administration of his old employer, he had made no friends in the village, and Ole Peters, his old antagonist, had just inherited property and was beginning to be a well-to-do man. A row of faces passed before his inner vision, and they all looked at him with hostile eyes. Then a rage against these people seized him: he stretched out his arms as if he would clutch them, for they wanted to push him from the office for which he alone, of all, was destined. These thoughts did not leave him; they were always there again, and so in his young heart there grew beside honor and love, also ambition and hate. But these two he locked up deep within him; even Elke surmised nothing of them.

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 table-cloth, 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:

“Ah, death all earthly things devours,

Takes art and knowledge that was ours;

The mortal man at rest here lies—

God give, that blesséd he may rise.”

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.