“Well, Elke!” he said.

She stood still and nodded at him: “All right, Hauke—but you should have been in there!”

“Do you think so? Why, Elke?”

“The dikemaster general has praised the master!”

“The master? What has that to do with me?”

“No, I mean, he has praised the dikemaster!”

The young man’s face was flushed crimson: “I know very well,” he said, “what you are driving at.”

  “Don’t blush, Hauke; it was really you whom the dikemaster general praised!”

Hauke looked at her with a half smile. “You too, Elke!” he said.

But she shook her head: “No, Hauke; when I was helper alone, we got no praise. And then, I can only do arithmetic; but you see everything outdoors that the dikemaster is supposed to see for himself. You have cut me out!”

“That isn’t what I intended—least of all you!” said Hauke timidly, and he pushed aside the head of a cow. “Come, Redskin, don’t swallow my pitchfork, you’ll get all you want!”

“Don’t think that I’m sorry, Hauke;” said the girl after thinking a little while; “that really is a man’s business.”

Then Hauke stretched out his arm toward her. “Elke, give me your hand, so that I can be sure.”

Beneath her dark brows a deep crimson flushed the girl’s face. “Why? I’m not lying!” she cried.

Hauke wanted to reply; but she had already left the stable, and he stood with his pitchfork in his hand and heard only the cackling and crowing of the ducks and the hens round her outside.

In the January of Hauke’s third year of service a winter festival was to be held—“Eisboseln” they call it here. The winds had been calm on the coast and steady frost had covered all the ditches between the fens with a solid, even, crystal surface, so that the marked-off strips of land offered a wide field for the throwing at a goal of little wooden balls filled with lead. Day in, day out, a light northeast wind was blowing: everything had been prepared. The people from the higher land, inhabitants of the village that lay eastward above the marshes, who had won last year, had been challenged to a match and had accepted. From either side nine players had been picked. The umpire and the score-keepers had been chosen. The latter, who had to discuss a doubtful throw whenever a difference of opinion came up, were always chosen from among people who knew how to place their own case in the best possible light, preferably young fellows who not only had good common sense but also a ready tongue. Among these was, above all, Ole Peters, the head man of the dikemaster. “Throw away like devils!” he said; “I’ll do the talking for nothing!”

Toward evening on the day before the holiday a number of throwers had appeared in the side room of the parish inn up on the higher land, in order to decide about accepting some men who had applied in the last moment. Hauke Haien was among these. At first he had not wanted to take part, although he was well aware of having arms skilled in throwing; but he was afraid that he might be rejected by Ole Peters who had a post of honor in the game, and he wanted to spare himself this defeat. But Elke had made him change his mind at the eleventh hour. “He won’t dare, Hauke,” she had said; “he is the son of a day laborer; your father has his cow and horse and is the cleverest man in the village.”

“But if he should manage to, after all?”

Half smiling she looked at him with her dark eyes. “Then he’ll get left,” she said, “in the evening, when he wants to dance with his master’s daughter.” Then Hauke had nodded to her with spirit.

Now the young men who still hoped to be taken into the game stood shivering and stamping outside the parish inn and looked up at the top of the stone church tower which stood beside the tavern. The pastor’s pigeons which during the summer found their food on the fields of the village were just returning from the farmyards and barns of the peasants, where they had pecked their grain, and were disappearing into their nests underneath the shingles of the tower. In the west, over the sea, there was a glowing sunset.

“We’ll have good weather to-morrow,” said one of the young fellows, and began to wander up and down excitedly; “but cold—cold.” Another man, when he saw no more pigeons flying, walked into the house and stood listening beside the door of the room in which a lively babble was now sounding. The second man of the dikemaster, too, had stepped up beside him. “Listen, Hauke,” he said to the latter; “now they are making all this noise about you.” And clearly one could hear from inside Ole Peters’s grating voice: “Underlings and boys don’t belong here!”

“Come,” whispered the other man and tried to pull Hauke by his sleeve to the door of the room, “here you can learn how high they value you.”

But Hauke tore himself away and went to the front of the house again: “They haven’t barred us out so that we should hear,” he called back.

Before the house stood the third of the applicants. “I’m afraid there’s a hitch in this business for me,” he called to Hauke; “I’m barely eighteen years old; if they only won’t ask for my birth certificate! Your head man, Hauke, will get you out of your fix, all right!”

“Yes, out!” growled Hauke and kicked a stone across the road; “but not in!”

The noise in the room was growing louder; then gradually there was calm. Those outside could again hear the gentle northeast wind that broke against the point of the church steeple. The man who listened joined them. “Whom did they take in there?” asked the eighteen-year-old one.

“Him!” said the other, and pointed to Hauke; “Ole Peters wanted to make him out as a boy; but the others shouted against it.—‘And his father has cattle and land,’ said Jess Hansen.—‘Yes, land,’ cried Ole Peters, ‘land that one can cart away on thirteen wheelbarrows!’ Last came Ole Hensen: ‘Keep still!’ he cried; ‘I’ll make things clear: tell me, who is the first man in the village?’—Then all kept mum and seemed to be thinking. Then a voice said: ‘I should say it was the dikemaster!’—‘And who is the dikemaster?’ cried Ole Hensen again; ‘but now think twice!’—Then somebody began to laugh quietly, and then someone else too, and so on till there was nothing but loud laughter in the room.—‘Well, then call him,’ said Ole Hensen; ‘you don’t want to keep the dikemaster out in the cold!’—I believe they’re still laughing; but Ole Peters’s voice could not be heard any more!” Thus the young fellow ended his account.

Almost in the same instant the door of the room inside the house was opened suddenly and out into the cold night sounded loud and merry cries of “Hauke! Hauke Haien!”

Then Hauke marched into the house and never could hear the rest of the story of who was the dikemaster; meanwhile no one has found out what was going on in his head.

After a while, when he approached the house of his employers, he saw Elke standing by the fence below, where the ascent began; the moonlight was shimmering over the measureless white frosted pasture.

“You are standing here, Elke?” he asked.

She only nodded: “What happened?” she said; “has he dared?”

“What wouldn’t he—?”

“Well, and—?”

“Yes, Elke; I’m allowed to try it to-morrow!”

“Good night, Hauke!” And she fled up the slope and vanished into the house.

Slowly he followed her.

Next afternoon on the wide pasture that extended in the east along the land side of the dike, one could see a dark crowd. Now it would stand motionless, now move gradually on, down from the long and low houses lying behind it, as soon as a wooden ball had twice shot forth from it over the ground now freed by the bright sun from frost.