Undine | Page 9

this time the ugly little man was standing half on the ground and
half within the great cavern where the tiny goblins played their games.
Now I heard him call to the mischievous imps to give him handfuls of
gold.
[Illustration: 'I saw in a great cavern a group of little goblins']
'This they did, and then he, laughing in my face, showed the gold to me
ere he flung it back again into the cavern.
'Then the ugly little man called to the tiny goblins to stop their pranks
and look at the coins I had given to him. When they caught sight of
them they held their little sides, shaking with laughter; then all at once
they turned and hissed at me.
'In spite of myself terror crept over me. Again I plunged my spurs into
my horse's sides, and it dashed madly off into the midst of the forest.
'When at length the flight ended, the evening lay cool and quiet around
me. A white footpath seemed to point out the way which led back to
the city. But each time I tried to approach it a face peered at me from
between the trees. I turned to escape from this new phantom, but in
vain, for whichever way I turned there was the face still staring at me.
'I grew angry and urged my horse in the direction of the shadowy face,

only however to find myself drenched by a stream of white foam.
'Thus I was driven away from the white footpath, and only one way,
rough and tangled, was left open to me. As soon as I began to follow it,
the face, though it kept close behind, did me no further harm.
'Yet again and again I turned, hoping to find that the face had
disappeared. Instead I found it closer than before, and now I could see
that it belonged to a tall white man. It was true that at times the long
white figure seemed to be but a wandering stream, but of this I was
never sure.
I was weary now and my horse was exhausted. It seemed useless to try
any longer to force my way past the white face, so I went on riding
quietly along the one path left open to me. The head of the tall man
then began to nod, as though to say that at length I was doing as he
wished.
'By this path I reached the end of the wood, and as the meadows and
the lake came into sight the white man vanished, and I found myself
standing near to your little cottage.'
As the knight had now finished the story of his adventure, the
fisherman began to talk to his guest of how he might return in safety to
the city and to the followers who there awaited him.
Huldbrand, listening to the old man, yet caught the soft ripple of
Undine's laughter.
'Why do you laugh, Undine?' asked the knight. 'Are you so pleased to
hear your foster-father talk of my return to the city?'
'I laugh for joy that you cannot leave us,' said the maiden. 'You have
but to look to see that you must stay.'
Huldbrand and the fisherman rose and saw that what the maiden had
said was indeed true. It would not be possible for the knight to leave
the little island until the stream had once more returned to its usual

course.
As they entered the cottage, Huldbrand whispered to the maiden,
'Undine, tell me that you are glad that I cannot yet return to the
crowded city.'
But the maiden's face was no longer glad, nor would she answer the
knight's question. She had remembered Bertalda.
When the stream had grown quiet the knight would go back to the lady
for whose sake he had undergone such strange perils. And of that time
the wilful maiden did not wish to think.

CHAPTER V
THE KNIGHT STAYS AT THE COTTAGE
Day after day the forest stream rushed wildly on. The bed along which
it thus hastened grew wider and wider, separating the island with the
fisherman's cottage yet farther from the mainland.
The knight was well pleased to linger where he was. Never had he
found the days pass by so swiftly.
He discovered an old crossbow in a corner of the cottage. When he had
mended it he would wander forth in search of birds, and if he
succeeded in bringing some down with his arrows, he would carry them
back to fill the larder of the little cottage.
And Undine, for she was pitiful, would not fail to upbraid the knight
for taking the life of the little birds, so glad, so free. Seeing them lying
there, quiet and still, she would