ine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little
stool and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman: "He
shall NOT tell his story, father? he shall not? But it is my will:--he
shall!--stop him who may!"

Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor,
but all with an air of such comic and good-humoured simplicity, that
Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her wild
emotion as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The old man,
on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He severely
reproved Undine for her disobedience and her unbecoming carriage towards
the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in harping on the same
string.

By these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. "If you want to
quarrel with me," she cried, "and will not let me hear what I so much
desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut!" And swift as an arrow
she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the night.

Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing to
stop the angry girl; but before they could reach the cottage-door, she
had disappeared in the stormy darkness without, and no sound, not so
much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she had
taken. Huldbrand threw a glance of inquiry towards his host; it almost
seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which had so
suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a continuation
of the wonderful forms that had just played their mad pranks with him in
the forest. But the old man muttered between his teeth,

"This is not the first time she has treated us in this manner. Now must
our hearts be filled with anxiety, and our eyes find no sleep for the
whole night; for who can assure us, in spite of her past escapes, that
she will not some time or other come to harm, if she thus continue out
in the dark and alone until daylight?"

"Then pray, for God's sake, father, let us follow her," cried Huldbrand
anxiously.

"Wherefore should we?" replied the old man. "It would be a sin were I
to suffer you, all alone, to search after the foolish girl amid the
lonesomeness of night; and my old limbs would fail to carry me to this
wild rover, even if I knew to what place she has betaken herself."

"Still we ought at least to call after her, and beg her to return," said
Huldbrand; and he began to call in tones of earnest entreaty, "Undin