the lake roared under the furious lashing
of the wind; the trees of the little peninsula groaned from root to
topmost bough, and bent, as if reeling, over the surging waters.
"Undine! for Heaven's sake, Undine." cried the two men in alarm. No
answer was returned, and regardless of every other consideration,
they ran out of the cottage, one in this direction, and the other in
that, searching and calling.

CHAPTER III.

HOW THEY FOUND UNDINE AGAIN.

The longer Huldbrand sought Undine beneath the shades of night, and
failed to find her, the more anxious and confused did he become.

The idea that Undine had been only a mere apparition of the forest,
again gained ascendancy over him; indeed, amid the howling of the
waves and the tempest, the cracking of the trees, and the complete
transformation of a scene lately so calmly beautiful, he could
almost have considered the whole peninsula with its cottage and its
inhabitants as a mocking illusive vision; but from afar he still
ever heard through the tumult the fisherman's anxious call for
Undine, and the loud praying and singing of his aged wife. At length
he came close to the brink of the swollen stream, and saw in the
moonlight how it had taken its wild course directly in front of the
haunted forest, so as to change the peninsula into an island. "Oh
God!" he thought to himself, "if Undine has ventured a step into
that fearful forest, perhaps in her charming wilfulness, just
because I was not allowed to tell her about it; and now the stream
may be rolling between us, and she may be weeping on the other side
alone, among phantoms and spectres!"

A cry of horror escaped him, and he clambered down some rocks and
overthrown pine-stems, in order to reach the rushing stream and by
wading or swimming to seek the fugitive on the other side. He
remembered all the awful and wonderful things which he had
encountered, even by day, under the now rustling and roaring
branches of the forest. Above all it seemed to him as if a tall man
in white, whom he knew but too well, was grinning and nodding on the
opposite shore; but it was just these monstrous forms which forcibly
impelled him to cross the flood, as the thought seized him that
Undine might be among them in the agonies of death and alone.

He had already grasped the strong branch of a pine, and was standing
supported by it, in the whirling current, against which he could
with difficulty maintain himself; though with a co