"Bad? Well, it will cost a few hundred sods and some straw work I suppose; I was out there too this afternoon." "We shan't get off as cheap as that, Ole," answered the dikegrave. "The water-course is there again and even if it doesn't strike against the old dike from the north now, it does from the northwest." "You ought to have left it where you found it," said Ole dryly. "That means," replied Hauke, "you're not concerned in the new koog and therefore it should not exist. That is your own fault. But if we have to plant brush hedges to protect the old dike the green clover behind the new one will more than make up for that." "What do you say, dikegrave?" cried the commissioners; "hedges? How many? You like to do everything the most expensive way!" The cards lay on the table untouched. "I'll tell you, dikegrave," said Ole Peters leaning his arms on the table, "your new koog that you've foisted on us is eating us up. Everyone is still suffering under the cost of your broad dike; now it's consuming the old dike too and you want us to renew that! Fortunately it's not so bad; it held this time and will continue to do so. Just mount your white horse again tomorrow and look at it once more." Hauke had come to the tavern out of the peace of his home. Behind the words he had just heard, which after all were fairly moderate, there lay--he could not fail to recognize it--an obstinate resistance. It seemed to him that he lacked the strength he had formerly had to cope with it. "I'll do as you advise, Ole," he said: "only I'm afraid I shall find it as I saw it today." A restless night followed this day; Hauke tossed sleeplessly about on his pillow. "What is the matter?" asked Elke, kept awake by worry about her husband; "if there is anything on your mind tell it to me; we have always done that." "It is not of any consequence, Elke," he replied; "there are some repairs to be made to the dike, to the sluices; you know that I always have to think such things out in my mind at night." He said nothing further; he wanted to keep himself free to act as he chose. Without his being conscious of it his wife's clear insight and strong mind were an obstacle to him in his present weakness and involuntarily he avoided it.