word, and Undine, while her eye
sparkled with delight, looked at the knight and said, "The best of the
story is, however, that as yet they have not roasted you! Go on, now,
you beautiful knight."

The knight then went on with his adventures. "My horse was so wild, that
he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees. He was
dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of
his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career. At last, altogether
beyond my control, he took his course directly up a stony steep, when
suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and threw himself athwart
the way my mad steed was taking. At this apparition he shuddered with
new affright, and stopped trembling. I took this chance of recovering my
command of him, and now for the first time perceived that my deliverer,
so far from being a white man, was only a brook of silver brightness,
foaming near me in its descent from the hill, while it crossed and
arrested my horse's course with its rush of waters."

"Thanks, thanks, dear brook!" cried Undine, clapping her little hands.
But the old man shook his head, and looked down in deep thought.

"Hardly had I well settled myself in my saddle, and got the reins in my
grasp again," Huldbrand pursued, "when a wizard-like dwarf of a man was
already standing at my side, diminutive and ugly beyond conception, his
complexion of a brownish-yellow, and his nose scarcely smaller than the
rest of him together. The fellow's mouth was slit almost from ear to
ear, and he showed his teeth with a grinning smile of idiot courtesy,
while he overwhelmed me with bows and scrapes innumerable. The farce now
becoming excessively irksome, I thanked him in the fewest words I could
well use, turned about my still trembling charger, and purposed either
to seek another adventure, or, should I meet with none, to take my way
back to the city; for the sun, during my wild chase, had passed the
meridian, and was now hastening toward the west. But this villain of
a dwarf sprang at the same instant, and, with a turn as rapid as
lightning, stood before my horse again. 'Clear the way there!' I cried
fiercely; 'the beast is wild, and will make nothing of running over
you.'

"'Ay, ay,' cried the imp with a snarl, and snorting out a laugh still
more frightfully idiotic; 'pay me, first pay what you owe me. I stopped
your fine little nag for you; without my help, both you and he would be
now sprawling b