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!"