After the New Year, trouble once more entered into the house; the dikegrave was seized with a marsh fever; it went hard with him too, and when, under Elke's nursing and care, he recovered, he scarcely seemed to be the same man. The languor of his body also lay upon his mind, and Elke was worried to see how easily content he was at all times. Nevertheless towards the end of March he was moved to mount his white horse and ride out again for the first time along the top of his dike. It was on an afternoon and the sun, which had been shining earlier in the day, had long since been concealed by the haze. A few times during the winter there had been high tides but they had done no serious damage; only over on the other bank a herd of sheep on an islet had been drowned and a bit of the foreland had been washed away; here on this side and in the new koog no harm worth mentioning had been done. But in the previous night a stronger gale had raged and now the dikegrave himself had to ride out and inspect everything with his own eyes. He had already ridden all along the new dike, beginning below at the southeast corner, and everything was in good condition, but as he came towards the northeast corner where the new dike ran up to the old one, the former was indeed uninjured, but where before the water-course had reached the old one and flowed along beside it, he saw that a great strip of the grass-line had been destroyed and washed away, and a hollow had been eaten in the body of the dike by the tide, which moreover, had thus laid bare a whole maze of mouse-passages. Hauke dismounted and inspected the damage from nearby: the destructive mouse-passages seemed unmistakably to continue on beyond where they could be seen. He was seriously frightened; all this should have been thought of and prevented at the time the new dike was built; as it had been overlooked then it must be taken care of now! The cattle were not yet out on the fens, the grass was unusually backward; in whatever direction he glanced it all looked bleak and empty. He mounted his horse and rode back and forth along the bank: the tide was low and he did not fail to perceive that the current from outside had bored a new bed for itself in the mud and had come from the northwest against the old dike: the new one however, as far as it was involved, had been able to withstand the onslaught of the waves owing to its gentler profile.