e ground. Still he could
plainly see that it was a woman, either asleep or in a swoon, and that
she was attired in long white garments such as Bertalda had worn
on that day. He stepped close up to her, made a rustling with the
branches, and let his sword clatter, but she moved not. "Bertalda!"
he exclaimed, at first in a low voice, and then louder and louder--but
still she heard not. At last, when he uttered the dear name with a
more powerful effort, a hollow echo from the mountain-caverns of the
valley indistinctly reverberated "Bertalda!" but still the sleeper
woke not. He bent down over her; the gloom of the valley and the
obscurity of approaching night would not allow him to distinguish her
features.

Just as he was stooping closer over her with a feeling of painful
doubt, a flash of lightning shot across the valley, he saw before him
a frightfully distorted countenance, and a hollow voice exclaimed,
"Give me a kiss, you enamoured swain!" Huldbrand sprang up with a
cry of horror, and the hideous figure rose with him. "Go home!" it
murmured; "wizards are on the watch. Go home, or I will have you!" and
it stretched out its long white arms toward him.

"Malicious Kuehleborn!" cried the knight, recovering himself. "Hey,
'tis you, you goblin? There, take your kiss!" And he furiously hurled
his sword at the figure. But it vanished like vapor, and a gush of
water which wetted him through left the knight in no doubt as to the
foe with whom he had been engaged. "He wishes to frighten me back from
Bertalda," said he aloud to himself; "he thinks to terrify me with his
foolish tricks, and to make me give up the poor distressed girl to him
so that he can wreak his vengeance on her. But he shall not do
that, weak spirit of the elements as he is. No powerless phantom
may understand what a human heart can do when its best energies are
aroused." He felt the truth of his words, and that the very expression
of them had inspired his heart with fresh courage.

It seemed too as if fortune were on his side, for he had not reached
his fastened horse when he distinctly heard Bertalda's plaintive voice
not far distant, and could catch her weeping accents through the ever
increasing tumult of the thunder and tempest. He hurried swiftly
in the direction of the sound, and found the trembling girl just
attempting to climb the steep in order to escape in any way from the
dreadful gloom of the valley. He stepped, however, lovingly in her
path,