Hauke laughed and took hold of the rein himself, when the horse at once began to rub its head caressingly against his shoulder. A few of the workmen looked fearfully over at horse and rider; others, as if all that did not concern them, continued to eat their lunch in silence, now and then throwing a crumb to the gulls which had remembered this feeding-place, and, balancing on their slender wings, tipped forward almost onto their heads. The dikegrave stood for a while, absently watching the begging birds as they caught the pieces thrown to them in their bills; then he sprang into the saddle and rode away without looking round at the men; the few words which they now spoke sounded to him almost like mockery. "What is it?" he said to himself; "was Elke right when she said they were all against me? Even these servants and small owners for many of whom my new dike means added prosperity?" He spurred his horse so that it flew down to the koog like mad. He himself knew nothing, to be sure, of the uncanny nimbus that his former stable-boy had thrown about the rider of the white horse; but if only the people had seen him then as he galloped along, his eyes staring out of his lean face, and his horse's red nostrils cracking! Summer and autumn had passed by; the work had gone on till near the end of November; then frost and snow had called a halt; the men had not been able to finish and it was decided to leave the koog lying open. Eight feet the dike rose above the level of the ground; only to the west towards the water where the sluice was to be laid a gap had been left; also above, in front of the old dike, the water-course was still untouched. Thus, as for the last thirty years, the tide could flow into the koog without doing much damage there or to the new dike. And so the work of men's hands was consigned to the great God above, and placed under his protection until the spring sun should make its completion possible.