A partner now came and claimed her friend and after she had gone Hauke spoke louder. "I thought I had won something better, Elke!"
Her eyes searched the floor a few seconds longer; then she raised them slowly and a glance, filled with the quiet strength of her being, met his and ran through him like summer warmth. "Do as your feeling tells you, Hauke," she said; "we ought to know each other!"
Elke did not dance again that evening and when they went home they went hand in hand; from the sky above the stars sparkled over the silent marsh; a light east wind blew and made the cold severe, but the two walked on without many wraps as if spring had suddenly come.
Hauke had thought of something, to be used perhaps only in the uncertain future, but with which he hoped to celebrate a secret festival. Accordingly he went to town the next Sunday to the old goldsmith Andersen and ordered a thick gold ring. "Stretch out your finger till I measure it," said the old man and took hold of Hauke's third finger. "It's not as big as most of you people have," he went on. But Hauke said: "I'd rather you measured my little finger," and he held it out to him.
The goldsmith looked at him somewhat puzzled; but what did he care what the whim of a young peasant might be. "We'll probably find one among the ladies' rings," he said, and the blood mounted into Hauke's cheeks. But the ring fitted his little finger and he took it hastily and paid for it with bright silver. Then, with his heart beating loudly and as if it were a solemn act, he put it into his waistcoat pocket. And from then on he carried it there day by day with a restless yet proud feeling, as if his waistcoat pocket were made only to carry a ring in.
So he carried it for years, in fact, the ring had to leave that pocket for a new one; no opportunity to escape presented itself. It had indeed passed through Hauke's head to go straight to his master; after all, his father belonged in the village and held land there. But in his calmer moments he knew well that the old dikegrave would have laughed at his second man. And so he and the dikegrave's daughter lived on side by side, she in girlish silence, and yet both as if they walked hand in hand.
A year after the winter festival Ole Peters had left the dikegrave's service and married Vollina Harders; Hauke had been right; the old man had retired and instead of his fat daughter his brisk son-in-law now rode the yellow mare to the fens and on his way back, it was said, always up the side of the dike. Hauke was now head man and a younger fellow had taken his former place. At first the dikegrave had not wanted to advance him. "He's better as second man," he had growled, "I need him here with my books!" But Elke had said, "Then Hauke would leave, Father!" That frightened the old man and Hauke had been made head man but he still kept on as before helping in the administration of the dike.
After another year had passed he began to talk to Elke about his father's growing feeble, and explained that the few days that the master allowed him in summer in which to help at home were no longer enough; the old man was overworking himself and he, Hauke, could not stand by and see it go on. It was a summer evening; the two were standing in the twilight under the great ash in front of the door of the house. For a time the girl looked up in silence at the bough of the tree; then she answered, "I did not want to say it, Hauke; I thought you would find the right thing to do yourself."
"Then I must go away out of your house," he said, "and cannot come again."