His head full of inward alarm and confused plans, he came home. He threw himself into his armchair and when Elke entered the room with their daughter he stood up again, lifted the child up and kissed her; then he drove the little yellow dog away from him with a few light blows. "I've got to go up to the tavern again!" he said and took his cap from the peg on the door, where he had only just hung it.
His wife looked at him troubled: "What do you want to do there? It's already growing dark, Hauke."
"Dike affairs," he murmured. "I'll meet some of the commissioners there."
She followed him and pressed his hand, for by the time he had finished speaking he was already outside the door. Hauke Haien, who hitherto had made all his decisions alone, now felt anxious to hear a word from those whose opinions he had formerly regarded as scarcely worth considering. In the inn he found Ole Peters sitting at the card table with two of the commissioners and a man who lived in the koog. "You've come from out on the dike, I suppose, dikegrave," said the former picking up the half-dealt cards and throwing them down again.
"Yes, Ole," replied Hauke; "I was out there; it looks bad."
"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!"