Elke, who had arranged the lunch, was just going out of the room door with a soft laugh as the two men clinked their glasses together. Then she fetched a dish of scraps from the kitchen and went through the stable to throw them to the fowls in front of the outside door. In the stable she found Hauke Haien just pitching hay into the cows' cribs, for the cattle had already been brought in for the winter owing to the bad weather. When he saw the girl coming he let his pitchfork rest on the ground. "Well, Elke!" he said. She stopped and nodded to him. "Oh, Hauke, you ought to have been in there just now!" "Should I? Why Elke?" "The chief dikegrave was praising the master!" "The master? What has that got to do with me?" "Well, of course, he praised the dikegrave!" A deep red spread over the young man's face. "I know what you are driving at," he said. "You needn't blush, Hauke; after all it was you whom the chief dikegrave praised!" Hauke looked at her half smiling. "But it was you too, Elke," he said. But she shook her head. "No, Hauke; when I was the only one that helped he didn't praise us. And all I can do is to figure; but you see everything outside that the dikegrave ought to see himself; you have cut me out!" "I didn't mean to, you least of all," said Hauke shyly, pushing aside one of the cows' heads. "Come, Spotty, don't eat up my fork; I'll give you all you want!" "Don't think that I am sorry," said the girl after thinking a minute; "after all it's a man's business!" [Illustration: CHURCHYARD ON A NORTH SEA ISLAND JACOB ALBERTS] Hauke stretched out his arm towards her. "Give me your hand on it, Elke." A deep scarlet shot up under the girl's dark brows. "Why? I don't lie," she cried. Hauke was about to answer, but she was already out of the stable, and standing with the pitchfork in his hand he could only hear the ducks and hens outside quacking and cackling around her. * * * * *