formed a circle round the open grave. Then Bertalda saw her unbidden
companion, and starting up half in anger and half in terror, she
commanded her to leave the knight's last resting-place. The veiled
figure, however, gently shook her head in refusal, and raised her
hands as if in humble supplication to Bertalda, deeply agitating her
by the action, and recalling to her with tears how Undine had so
kindly wished to give her that coral necklace on the Danube. Father
Heilmann motioned with his hand and commanded silence, as they were
to pray in mute devotion over the body, which they were now covering
with the earth. Bertalda knelt silently, and all knelt, even the
grave-diggers among the rest, when they had finished their task. But
when they rose again, the white stranger had vanished; on the spot
where she had knelt there gushed out of the turf a little silver
spring, which rippled and murmured away till it had almost entirely
encircled the knight's grave; then it ran further and emptied itself
into a lake which lay by the side of the burial-place. Even to this
day the inhabitants of the village show the spring, and cherish the
belief that it is the poor rejected Undine, who in this manner still
embraces her husband in her loving arms.

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