'When you have entered the haunted forest all alone,' said she; 'when
you have explored its wonders, and brought me a full account of them,
the glove is yours.' As to getting her glove, it was of no importance
to me whatever, but the word had been spoken, and no honourable knight
would permit himself to be urged to such a proof of valour a second
time."

"I thought," said Undine, interrupting him, "that she loved you."

"It did appear so," replied Huldbrand.

"Well!" exclaimed the maiden, laughing, "this is beyond belief; she must
be very stupid. To drive from her one who was dear to her! And worse
than all, into that ill-omened wood! The wood and its mysteries, for all
I should have cared, might have waited long enough."

"Yesterday morning, then," pursued the knight, smiling kindly upon
Undine, "I set out from the city, my enterprise before me. The early
light lay rich upon the verdant turf. It shone so rosy on the slender
boles of the trees, and there was so merry a whispering among the
leaves, that in my heart I could not but laugh at people who feared
meeting anything to terrify them in a spot so delicious. 'I shall soon
pass through the forest, and as speedily return,' I said to myself, in
the overflow of joyous feeling, and ere I was well aware, I had entered
deep among the green shades, while of the plain that lay behind me I was
no longer able to catch a glimpse.

"Then the conviction for the first time impressed me, that in a forest
of so great extent I might very easily become bewildered, and that this,
perhaps, might be the only danger which was likely to threaten those
who explored its recesses. So I made a halt, and turned myself in the
direction of the sun, which had meantime risen somewhat higher, and
while I was looking up to observe it, I saw something black among the
boughs of a lofty oak. My first thought was, 'It is a bear!' and I
grasped my weapon. The object then accosted me from above in a human
voice, but in a tone most harsh and hideous: 'If I, overhead here, do
not gnaw off these dry branches, Sir Noodle, what shall we have to roast
you with when midnight comes?' And with that it grinned, and made such a
rattling with the branches that my courser became mad with affright,
and rushed furiously forward with me before I had time to see distinctly
what sort of a devil's beast it was."

"You must not speak so," said the old fisherman, crossing himself. His
wife did the same, without saying a