"Yes, indeed, Dikegrave, that he will; there you're quite right!" said old Haien and began to arrange for several benefits to be included in his son's contract which had not occurred to the boy the evening before. Thus besides the linen shirts that Hauke was to receive in the autumn in addition to his wages, he was also to have eight pairs of woolen stockings; then he was to help his father with the work at home for a week in the spring and so on. The dikegrave agreed to everything; Hauke Haien seemed to be just the right man for him. "Well, God have mercy on you, my boy," said the old man as soon as they left the house, "if you are to learn from him how the world goes!" But Hauke answered quietly: "Let it be, Father; everything will turn out all right." * * * * * And Hauke was not wrong; the world, or what the world meant to him, did grow clearer to him the longer he stayed in that house. This was more the case perhaps, the less a superior judgment came to his aid, and the more he was obliged to depend on his own strength, on which he had been accustomed to rely from the beginning. There was one person in the house to be sure whom he did not suit at all and that was Ole Peters, the head man, a capable workman but a fellow with a very ready tongue. The former lazy and stupid but stocky second man on whose back he had been able to load a whole barrel of oats and whom he could knock about as he chose had been more to his liking. He could not get at Hauke, who was much quieter and mentally far superior to him, in this way; for Hauke had such a very peculiar way of looking at him. Nevertheless he managed to find work for him which might have been dangerous to his body as it was not yet firmly knit, and when he said: "You should have seen fat Niss; it was all play to him!" Hauke took hold with all his strength and managed to do the job even though he had to overexert himself. It was fortunate for him that Elke was generally able to countermand such orders either herself or through her father. We may well ask ourselves what it is that sometimes binds perfect strangers to each other; perhaps--they were both born mathematicians and the girl could not bear to see her comrade ruined by doing rough work. The breach between the head man and his subordinate did not grow better in winter when, after Martinmas, the different dike accounts came in to be examined. It was on a May evening, but the weather was like November; inside the house the surf could be heard thundering out beyond the dike. "Here, Hauke," said the master of the house, "come in here; now you can show whether you can figure!" "I have got to feed the yearlings first, Master," replied Hauke. "Elke," called the dikegrave, "where are you, Elke? Go to Ole and tell him to feed the yearlings; Hauke must come and figure!"