But the boy could not be convinced: if the devil was in the horse why shouldn't it be alive? On the contrary, so much the more for that! He started every time that he went into the stable towards evening, where even in summer the animal was sometimes bedded, when he saw it toss its fiery head towards him so sharply. "The devil take it!" he would murmur, then, "we shan't be together much longer." So he began to look about him secretly for a new place, gave notice, and on All Saints' Day entered Ole Peters' service. There he found attentive listeners to his story of the dikegrave's devil-horse. Ole's fat wife, Vollina, and her stupid father, the former dike commissioner Jess Harders, listened to it with pleasurable shuddering, and later repeated it to everyone who had a spite against the dikegrave or who enjoyed tales of that kind. In the meantime towards the end of March the order to begin work on the new dike had been received through the chief dikegrave. Hauke's first step was to call together the dike commissioners and they all assembled one day in the tavern up by the church and listened while he read the main points to them from the various documents: from his petition, from the report of the chief dikegrave, finally from the decision in which, above all, the profile that he had proposed was accepted, so that the new dike would not be steep like the other but slope gradually on the water-side; but they did not listen with cheerful or even satisfied faces. "Yes, yes," said an old commissioner, "we are in for it now and no protests can help us, for the chief dikegrave is backing up our dikegrave." "You're right enough, Dethlev Wiens," said another; "the spring work is at the door and now we've got to make miles of dike, so of course we must drop everything else." "You can finish all that this year," said Hauke; "things won't move as fast as that." Few of them were ready to admit it. "And your profile!" said a third, bringing up a new subject; "on the outside, towards the water, the dike will be wider than Lawrenz's child was long! Where are we to get the material? When will the work be done?" "If not this year, then next; that will depend mainly on ourselves," said Hauke. A laugh of annoyance passed through the company. "But why all this useless work? The dike is not to be any higher than the old one," shouted a new voice; "and that's been standing for more than thirty years I think!"