ch the poor
wife understood well. Wearied with this exhibition of displeasure and
exhausted by the constant effort to frustrate Kuehleborn's artifices,
she sank one evening into a deep slumber, rocked soothingly by the
softly gliding bark.

Scarcely, however, had she closed her eyes when every one in the
vessel imagined he saw, in whatever direction he turned, a most
horrible human head; it rose out of the waves, not like that of a
person swimming, but perfectly perpendicular as if invisibly supported
upright on the watery surface and floating along in the same course
with the bark. Each wanted to point out to the other the cause of his
alarm, but each found the same expression of horror depicted on the
face of his neighbor, only that his hands and eyes were directed to a
different point where the monster, half laughing and half threatening,
rose before him. When, however, they all wished to make one another
understand what each saw, and all were crying out, "Look there--!
No--there!" the horrible heads all appeared simultaneously to their
view, and the whole river around the vessel swarmed with the most
hideous apparitions. The universal cry raised at the sight awoke
Undine. As she opened her eyes the wild crowd of distorted visages
disappeared. But Huldbrand was indignant at such unsightly jugglery.
He would have burst forth in uncontrolled imprecations had not Undine
said to him with a humble manner and a softly imploring tone, "For
God's sake, my husband, we are on the water; do not be angry with me
now." The knight was silent, and sat down absorbed in reverie. Undine
whispered in his ear, "Would it not be better, my love, if we gave up
this foolish journey and returned to Castle Ringstetten in peace?"

But Huldbrand murmured moodily, "So I must be a prisoner in my own
castle and be able to breathe only so long as the fountain is closed!
I would your mad kindred--" Undine lovingly pressed her fair hand upon
his lips. He paused, pondering in silence over much that Undine had
before said to him.

Bertalda had meanwhile given herself up to a variety of strange
thoughts. She knew a good deal of Undine's origin, and yet not the
whole, and the fearful Kuehleborn especially had remained to her a
terrible but wholly unrevealed mystery. She had indeed never even
heard his name. Musing on these strange things, she unclasped,
scarcely conscious of the act; a gold necklace, which Huldbrand had
lately purchased for her of a