Elke met him in the hall; "How did you find the sluice?" she asked.
He looked down at her with a mysterious smile: "We shall soon need another sluice," he said, "and drains and a new dike!"
"I don't understand," replied Elke as they went into the room. "What is it that you want, Hauke?"
"I want," he said slowly and stopped a moment. "I want to have the big stretch of outland that begins opposite our place and then runs towards the west, all diked in and a well-drained koog made out of it. The high tides have left us in peace for nearly a generation, but if one of the really bad ones should come again and destroy the new growth, everything might be ruined at one blow; only the old slip-shod way of doing things could have let it go on like that so long."
She looked at him in amazement. "Then you blame yourself!" she said.
"Yes, I do, Elke; but there has always been so much else to do."
"I know, Hauke; you have done enough!"
He had seated himself in the old dikegrave's easy-chair and his hands gripped both arms of it firmly.
"Have you the courage to do it?" asked his wife.