d him: "Trust
him not--trust not! The old fellow is tricksy--the stream!"

Well he knew those silver tones: the moon was just disappearing behind
a cloud, and he stood amid the deepening shades, made dizzy as the
water shot by him with the speed of an arrow. Yet he would not desist.
"And if thou art not truly there, if thou flittest before me an empty
shadow, I care not to live; I will melt into air like thee, my beloved
Undine!" This he cried aloud, and strode further into the flood.

"Look round then--look round, fair youth!" he heard just behind him,
and looking round, he beheld by the returning moonbeams, on a fair
island left by the flood, under some thickly interlaced branches,
Undine all smiles and loveliness, nestling in the flowery grass. How
much more joyfully than before did the young man use his pine staff to
cross the waters! A few strides brought him through the flood that had
parted them; and he found himself at her side, on the nook of soft
grass, securely sheltered under the shade of the old trees. Undine
half arose, and twined her arms round his neck in the green arbour,
making him sit down by her on the turf. "Here you shall tell me all,
my own friend," said she in a low whisper; "the cross old folks cannot
overhear us. And our pretty bower of leaves is well worth their
wretched hut."

"This is heaven!" cried Huldbrand, as he clasped in his arms the
beautiful flatterer.

Meantime the old man had reached the banks of the stream, and he
called out: "So, Sir Knight, when I had made you welcome, as one
honest man should another, here are you making love to my adopted
child--to say nothing of your leaving me to seek her, alone and
terrified, all night."

"I have but this moment found her, old man!" cried the Knight in
reply.

"Well, I am glad of that," said the Fisherman; "now then bring her
back to me at once."

But Undine would not hear of it. She had rather she said, go quite
away into the wild woods with the handsome stranger, than return to
the hut, where she had never had her own way, and which the Knight
must sooner or later leave. Embracing Huldbrand, she sang with
peculiar charm and grace:

"From misty cave the mountain wave
Leapt out and sought the main!
The Ocean's foam she made her home,
And ne'er returned again."

The old man wept bitterly as she sang, but this did not seem to move
her. She continued to caress her lover, till at length he said:
"Undine, the poor old man's gr