But the blood was returning into Elke's face. "Can you wait, Hauke?" she asked in a low voice.
Clever Frisian though he was, he nevertheless had to stop and think a few seconds. "For what?" he asked then.
"You know perfectly well; I don't need to tell you."
"You are right," he said; "yes, Elke, I can wait--if it's within a human limit."
"Oh, God, I'm afraid, a very near one! Don't talk like that, Hauke; you are speaking of my father's death!" She laid her other hand on her breast; "Till then," she said, "I shall wear the gold ring here; you shan't be afraid of getting it back in my lifetime!"
Then both smiled, and their hands pressed each other so tightly that on other occasions the girl would have cried out aloud.
The pastor's wife meanwhile had looked incessantly at Elke's eyes, which were now glowing like dark fire under the lace fringe of her little gold brocade cap. But in the growing noise at the table she had not understood a word; neither did she turn to her partner again, for she was accustomed not to disturb budding marriages--and this seemed to be such a case--if only for the sake of the promise of the wedding-fee for her husband, who did the marrying.
Elke's presentiment had come true; one morning after Easter the dikemaster Tede Volkerts had been found dead in his bed. When one looked at his face, one could see written upon it that his end had been calm. In the last months he had often expressed a weariness of life; his favorite roast, even his ducks, wouldn't please him any more.
And now there was a great funeral in the village. Up on the high land in the burying-ground round the church there was on the western side a burial-place surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Upright against a weeping willow stood a broad blue tombstone upon which was hewn the image of death with many teeth in the skeleton jaws; beneath it one could read in large letters:
"Ah, death all earthly things devours,
Takes art and knowledge that was ours;
The mortal man at rest here lies--
God give, that blesséd he may rise."