"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?"