The Rider on the White Horse

"You aren't good for anything!" he cried out into the noise. "Just as the people are no good!" And at last, often in darkness, he trotted home from the wide water along the dike, until his tall figure had reached the low door under his father's thatch roof and slipped into the little room.

Sometimes he had brought home a handful of clay; then he sat down beside the old man, who now humoured him, and by the light of the thin tallow candle he kneaded all sorts of dike models, laid them in a flat dish with water and tried to imitate the washing away by the waves; or he took his slate and drew the profiles of the dikes toward the waterside as he thought they ought to be.